Israel marks Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day

         Israel on Thursday marked Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance day. AT 10 a.m, a siren will be sounded, followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. In the Knesset, a public recitation of Holocaust victims' names will take place, in the ceremony "Unto Every Person There is a Name." Some 30 dignitaries have been invited to participate, including President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Holocaust survivors and members of the second and third generations will light six memorial candles. Special school assemblies are being held around the country. In Poland, the annual March of the Living from the Auschwitz to Birkenau camps, will take place with the participation of youth from Israel and abroad. Holocaust Remembrance Day events will close this evening in a ceremony at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGettaot in the Galilee. The ceremony will commemorate 70 years since the great deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto. At the Yad Vashem torchlighting ceremony on Wednesday night, which marked the start of Holocaust Remembrance commemorations, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that a nuclear-armed Iran poses an existential threat to the state of Israel. He said anyone who dismisses this threat as an exaggeration has learned nothing from the Holocaust. It is an obligation to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, Netanyahu said, this is the obligation of the world, and above all else, of Israel. We have the ability, and obligation and the determination to defend ourselves, he said. President Shimon Peres, in his remarks, spoke of his own family's suffering in Poland at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. During the ceremony six Holocaust survivors lit torches in memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The theme of the ceremony was "My Brother's Keeper: Jewish Solidarity in the Holocaust."