WARSAW, Poland, April 19 (UPI) -- Jews who fought Nazi troops during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising 70 years ago were honored Friday in ceremonies in the Polish capital of Warsaw, officials said.
Speaking at the site of the former ghetto, President Bronislaw Komorowski praised the 13,000 Jews who died in the battle for their "last stand," the BBC reported.
"This was the last stand of people deprived of dignity and hope," he said at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. "Hundreds of insurgents stood to defend the last remnants of human freedom."
Wailing sirens and the tolling of church bells marked the ceremony.
Before the April 19, 1943, uprising, Nazis deported the surviving Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka concentration camp where 800,000 Jews died in the gas chambers.
After the uprising the Germans reduced the ghetto to rubble.
The anniversary is also being commemorated with the opening of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews.
