Israel honors 6 million Jews

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JERUSALEM, April 19 (UPI) -- Israel came to a standstill Thursday as a nationwide 2-minute siren marked Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

This year's theme for the Memorial Day is "My Brother's Keeper -- Jewish Solidarity during the Holocaust."

The state ceremony took place at the Warsaw Ghetto Square in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum in Jerusalem. The ceremony marked the culmination of a special project initiated by the museum that began last year dubbed "Gathering the Fragments," whereby appeals were made to the public to take to the museum documents, diaries, photographs and any other memorabilia from Holocaust victims so they could be documented and preserved for future generations, Haaretz said.

Ceremonies were all held at the Knesset and elsewhere in the country.

At a ceremony Wednesday night to mark the beginning of Holocaust Remembrance Day that was screened live on national television networks, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said those who dismiss the Iranian threat as a whim have learned nothing from the Holocaust.

"A nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and also to the rest of the world. We have an obligation to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. It's the world's obligation, but above all it is our obligation," Ynetnews.com quoted Netanyahu saying.