Sirens wailed in Israel for 2 minutes at 10 a.m. Monday in memory of six million victims of Nazi terror while communities around the world stand united with the Jewish People at Holocaust remembrance ceremonies.

In Israel, the entire country came to a halt as cars and buses stopped and people in buildings and on the streets stopped in their tracks and stood silently to unite in prayer and remember the six million who were butchered by Nazis. During the memorial services which followed, survivors related the horrible past with some breaking a 60-year-silence to bring to light new episodes of horror.

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In the Knesset and at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Museum and Remembrance Authority, names of victims are being read aloud.

In Europe, several thousand young Jews are participating in the traditional three-kilometer "March of the Living." The march begins from the site of the former German concentration camp Auschwitz and retraces the steps that Jews were forced to take on their way to the gas chambers at the Birkenau death camp, the largest that the Nazis operated.

In major cities and rural towns in American and around the world, survivors are revealing the nightmares that still haunt them.

In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at a memorial service in Ottawa Sunday, "There are still people who would perpetrate another Holocaust if they could." Implying but not directly referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Prime Minister Harper added, "Politicians... must stand up to those who advocate the destruction of Israel and its people today, and they must be unequivocal in their condemnation of anti-Semitic despots, terrorists and fanatics.''

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker was more direct and said, "Any attempt to resurrect such designs, as we are presently witnessing emanating from the president of Iran and others, must be firmly dealt with by all responsible nations and peoples of the world."

In Austria, a project in coordination with Yad Vashem provides a video link between school children and Holocaust survivors, who will answer questions after telling the stories of the nightmares of the Nazi era.

Recent studies have shown that anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Europe, and the Austrian program is designed to educate the younger generation to the threat of another genocide against Jews.

Henry Golde, age 77 and one of the last survivors in the state of Wisconsin, has launched a tour of schools in the state. He published his memoirs in the Ragdolls three years ago.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger related stories related by his mother, who told him of "bodies she saw lying on the side of the road, shot to death because they were Jews."

As time takes its toll and blurs the past, children of survivors are concerned about the new wave of Holocaust denial. "They had no graves, no names—it is important to remember they were once here," said Eda Yardeni Taylor of Macon, Georgia, whose mother survived Auschwitz.

Henry Freidman of Atlanta related that he worked in a German munitions factory and didn't hear of the concentration camps until after the war because "the German propaganda was very, very good." Learning the extent of the persecution and seeing the devastation was shocking and horrifying.

Friedman moved to the United States after the war and married and had a son, but like many survivors, "For many, many years, I wasn't able to talk about it. It was very painful." He says that now he feels an obligation to pass down to generations the stories of the Nazi era.

“If you forget, it’s destined to happen again,” said a young non-Jewish girl who participated in a memorial ceremony in Kentucky. "It’s our generation’s duty to stop it."

Photos courtesy of http://myrehovot.info/eng