Holocaust commemoration in Israel and Poland.

In Israel and in Poland, people have thought of the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. For the first time Roma took part in the celebrations in Israel.

At 10:00 local time clock (11.00 clock BST) howled at the Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel for two minutes, the sirens, the whole country stood still. In the traditional memorial service in the Israeli parliament, the names were read out by Jews, the Nazis had killed during the Second World War in Europe.

U.S. veterans' memorial at Auschwitz

In Poland, involved some 10,000 people, mainly young people from Israel and Jewish communities, the annual "March of the Living" in Oswiecim (Auschwitz). They walked through the main gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp with its cynical-infamous inscription "Arbeit macht frei" and put back the two miles to the extermination camp at Birkenau. For the first time took part in the march from the U.S. World War II veterans who were involved, among other things in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in Bavaria, Thuringia and Austria. Russian veterans were not invited to the event.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was established by the Nazis as part of its policy of annihilation near the southern Polish city of Krakow. In the concentration and extermination camps were killed in the years 1940 to 1945 about 1.1 million people, including one million Jews. The camp was in 27 Was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945. As a reminder, it has been 27 January in Germany since 1996, a National Day for the Victims of National Socialism. The United Nations declared 2006 to date worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In Israel, was the central event in the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem under the motto "my brother's keeper - Jewish Solidarity during the Holocaust." For the first time took a delegation of the European Roma and Sinti. It is estimated that up to 500,000 were European Sinti and Roma to Nazi racial hatred for the victim. The Chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose, pointed out the connection between the mass murder of Jews and the special security concerns of Israel: "He who understands the security needs of Israel, not the one who failed to understand the Holocaust," said Rose.

The commemorations had started on Wednesday evening at Yad Vashem with a ceremony and a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He referred to a "nuclear Iran" as the "existential threat" to Israel.