Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

The gates of Auschwitz, with the inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work sets you free)

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Although never far from their collective and - in decreasing numbers individual - memories, the genocide of Europe's more than six million Jews was set to be revisited by Israel's 5.5 million sons and daughters of Abraham Wednesday, as the nation whose state was reborn out of the very ashes of Auschwitz prepared to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day.

For 24 hours, until sunset Thursday, Israelis will saturate themselves with images, films, interviews, news reports, special gatherings and school assemblies, and a two-minute-long nationwide siren designed to pause them in memory how one out of every three of the world's Jews was murdered at Nazi hands.

About 250,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive in Israel today, according to The Jerusalem Post.

A torch-lighting ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem will start the special day for this people which, more then any other in history, has been hated and targeted for destruction just because of who they are as a nation.

While the numbers crushed in Hitler's death machine were unprecedented, they were "only" the largest batch of victims who have fallen prey to Jew-hatred down the centuries.

Today's Israeli Jews know that the same hatred endures, seething in the hearts of tens of millions of Arabs and Muslims around and among them.

As Hitler sought to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and ultimately of the whole world, so Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leaders and citizens in the Arab world dream and plan to exterminate the Jews in Israel.

Israel observes Yom HaShoah.

Israel began marking its annual Holocaust Remembrance Day with President Shimon Peres vowing the Jewish state would never allow the Jewish genocide to be repeated.

"We will never forget, we will never hide and we will never stop asking ourselves every morning what we must do to prevent what happened to ever repeat itself," Peres said at the main ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial at sundown Wednesday.

Six torches were lit during the ceremony to honour the memory of the six million Jews who were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that anti-Semitism and that Holocaust denial was on the rise across the world, referring mainly to Iran.

"Still, 63 years later, who would believe, the ugly face of the hatred of Jews and Israelis appears on different stages across the planet," the premier said at the ceremony.

"You wish to deny the right of existence of the Jewish state, and you are wrong to believe that the Jewish state was created only due to the Holocaust.

"The Holocaust only underscored the necessity of its creation and the horrible price that the Jewish people had to pay for the lack of existence of a state that can shelter them," Olmert said.

In Poland at Auschwitz, there will be the annual March of the Living.

Young Jews will pledge to fight all genocide during a Yom Hashoah gathering at Auschwitz.

Some 10,000 participants in the annual March of the Living will sign the pledge Thursday -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- at the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

The March of the Living Pledge commits each individual, the majority of whom are aged 16 to 22, "to fight every form of discrimination manifested against any religion, nationality or ethnic group."

It goes on to say, "After the Shoah the promise of 'Never Again' was proclaimed. We pledge to create a world where Never Again will become a reality for the Jewish People and, indeed, for all people. This is our solemn pledge to the Jewish People, to those who came before us, to those of our generation, and to those who will follow in future generations."

The ceremony will be led by Brig. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, in recognition of Israel's 60th anniversary.

Following Thursday's event, a global effort will attempt to enlist the support of the 150,000 March of the Living alumni to publicly state their condemnation of genocide past and present.