Photo Essay: Holocaust Day in Israel and Auschwitz

Israel National News shows you photos of Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel and in the Auschwitz death camp, where IDF top officials are visiting. (Email subscribers, click here to view the photo essay)

The siren sounds and Israelis exit their vehicles and stand at attention.

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

Even the bustle of Jerusalem's Machaneh Yehuda open-air shuk comes to a halt at 10 AM, with the shrill harmony of multiple sirens sounding across the Jerusalem rooftops.

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

Even in the middle of crossing the street, the moments of the siren are set aside from quiet reflection, prayer and memories of the horrors and lessons of the Shoah (Holocaust).

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

The moment of silent unity is not enshrined in law, but it is nearly universally observed, whether through prayer, silence or quiet Torah learning in memory of the victims.

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

A large photo at the Yad VaShem Holocaust Museum of the view of the Auschwitz death camp as seen from the cattle-cars of the trains bringing in Jews from afar for murder.

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabriel Ashkenazi, with a delegation of IDF top brass beneath the "Work Will Set You Free" inscription over the gates of the infamous Auschwitz death camp.

(Israel news photo: IDF Spokesman)

Holocaust survivor Yehudith Ashriel tells her story before IDF top officials in Auschwitz.

(Israel news photo: IDF Spokesman)

IDF Chief of Staff Gabriel Ashkenazi looks at the ovens used to burn Jews in Auschwitz. Ashkenazi's father was a Holocaust survivor; his mother a Jewish refugee from Syria.

(Israel news photo: IDF Spokesman)

IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi visits the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.

(Israel news photo: IDF Spokesman)

Jewish families in Ashkelon inspect the graves of their loved ones, smashed apart by a rocket fired from Gaza by terrorists who also aspire to the liquidation of the Jewish people. Rockets landed in Sderot during a Holocaust memorial ceremony there.

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert puts his arm around a relative who survived the Holocaust at a state ceremony at Jerusalem's Yad VaShem Museum.

(Israel news photo: Flash 90)

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabriel Ashkenazi viewing prosthetics and crutches stolen from Jews at Auschwitz.

(Israel news photo: IDF Spokesman)

"I came as the IDF Chief of Staff on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, and on the 60th year of independence of Israel to say: never again," Lt.-Gen. Ashkenazi wrote in the Auschwitz guestbook.

Click here for last year's photo essay "As the Siren Sounds"