Sirens marked the start of a state wreath-laying service at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center, as Israelis observed two minutes of silence in remembrance of the 6 million Jews killed during World War II.
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In a brief ceremony marking the start of the day in Israel, six survivors lit candles in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.
Israel's annual Holocaust Memorial Day began after sunset Wednesday and lasts until sunset Thursday.
The country came to a two-minute standstill at 10 a.m. local time (0700 UTC/GMT), with traffic stopping in the middle of roads in cities and on highways. There were also ceremonies at schools, colleges and universities throughout the country.
Israelis observe two minutes of silence
01:06
Netanyahu speaks
"Nazi ideology pointed to the Jews as the source of all evil in the world," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at an opening ceremony at Yad Vashem on Wednesday night, adding that modern anti-Semitism pointed to Israel as the source of all evil.
"Lies about the Jews and willfully false propaganda about Israel are being spread on social media - means Hitler and Goebbels wouldn't have dreamed of," he said. "Anti-Semitism didn't disappear with the death of Hitler in his bunker... propaganda in the Western world against Israel is no less poisonous than that of extremist Islam and the Arab world," he said.
Hostility against Israel - not just in the Arab world, but also "among British MPs, senior officials in Sweden and public opinion-shapers in France" - had long ago "departed from legitimate criticism," he said.
Israel's rise from the ashes
Although the UN has designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel traditionally marks it on the 27th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, one week before Independence Day, to symbolize the rise of the state of Israel from the ashes of the Holocaust.
About six million Jews died at the hands of Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II.
Yesterday's tomorrow
A 2015 study found that some 45,000 of Israel's estimated remaining 190,000 Holocaust survivors are now living in poverty.
Meanwhile, a research center said on Wednesday that there had been a 46-percent decrease in anti-Semitic violence around the world in 2015 compared to 2014.
Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center said it recorded 410 violent incidents in 2015, compared to 766 in 2014, the lowest number in the recent decade. But the center also noted a dramatic increase in non-violent acts, mainly anti-Semitic expressions on social media, which "turned more threatening and insulting."
Army figure rebuked
The Israeli army's deputy chief of staff has drawn a rebuke from hawkish Israeli ministers for comparing pre-Holocaust Germany to trends in Israel today.
Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, speaking at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at a kibbutz in central Israel, said, "If there is something that frightens me in Holocaust remembrance, it is ghastly trends that took place in Europe in general, and in Germany specifically, 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding a sign of them here among us, today in 2016."
Education Minister Naftali Bennett called on Golan to correct his statement.
The Israeli military said on Thursday that Golan did not intend to compare Israel and its army to "the horrors" of Germany 70 years ago.
jbh/msh (dpa, AFP, AP)
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
Image: picture-alliance/Daniel Karmann
German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.