Israel remembers Warsaw uprising

JERUSALEM — Israel’s annual memorial day for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust began with a ceremony marking 70 years since the Warsaw ghetto uprising, a symbol of Jewish resistance against the Nazis that resonates deeply in Israel.

At the opening ceremony at nightfall Sunday, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu linked the Jewish revolt of 1943 to the warrior mentality that enabled the establishment of Israel five years later.

“There was a never a rebellion like it. They were so few and their bravery remained as a model for so many,” Peres said at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, before hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others.

“A clear line exists between the resistance in the ghettos, in the camps and in the forests and the rebirth and bravery of the state of Israel. It is a line of dignity, of renewed independence, of mutual responsibility, of exalting God’s name,” he said, “as a ray of hope which was not extinguished even during terrible anguish. The ghetto fighters sought life even when circumstance screamed despair.”

Netanyahu called the uprising “a turning point in the fate of the Jewish people” where they transformed from helpless victims into fearless warriors.

Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators in the Holocaust, a third of world Jewry.

The 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first large-scale rebellion against the Nazis in Europe and the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, it became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions, illustrated a refusal to give in to Nazi atrocities and inspired other acts of resistance by Jews and non-Jews alike.