The wail of sirens brought Israel to a standstill this morning for a two minute silence to remember the victims of the Holocaust.At a memorial ceremony Prime Minister Netanyahu said Holocaust deniers would never be allowed to carry out another Holocaust of the Jewish people.

Six million Jews were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust after 1942.

Ceremonies of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust are planned in countries the world over.

During the two minute silence in Israel pedestrians stopped in their tracks, drivers pulled over and got out of their cars and people in offices rose to stand next to their desks.

At Yad Vashem, twin sisters Lia and Iudit, who survived the Holocaust, lit a torch to open the remembrance day ceremony, before Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu laid a wreath.

Mr Netanyahu said it was the supreme commitment of the state of Israel to never again let the Jewish people perish in a Holocaust.

Critical voices

The Holocaust Remembrance Day will be marked in communities all over Israel. Later on an official ceremony is to be held in the Knesset.




"It is a gift that today Jewish life flourishes again in Germany. But that venues of Jewish life must be protected from old and new extremists by police that is a disgrace. "
German President Horst Koehler

But critics have said that while too much is being done to commemorate the dead, too little thought goes to the living. Tens of thousand of Holocaust survivors are believed to be living in Israel below the poverty line.

In Germany the parliament commemorated the day with an address by President Horst Koehler.

In Poland Holocaust survivors will walk from Auschwitz to the site of the death camp in Birkenau in the annual March of the Living. And 10,000 students from 40 different nations will attend memorial ceremonies at Auschwitz.

The biggest event in the US will take place in Washington at the Holocaust Memorial Museum which described the day as a reminder to Americans "of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred and indifference reign".

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