Official memorial ceremonies from Sunday evening through Monday are dedicated this year to the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and other episodes of heroic Jewish resistance to the Nazis in World War II. President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu led the main ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem Sunday night. Holocaust survivors attended by their grandchildren and an Israeli military honor guard lit torches in memory of the six million slain victims.
Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, at the head of an IDF delegation to Poland, addressed the memorial ceremony at the site of the Auschwitz death camp. He said: "The State of Israel is the guarantee for the non-repetition ever again of this horror and its defense forces are the bulwark for the Jewish people’s national home and safe refuge.