Israel fell silent on Holocaust Memorial Day on Thursday, as the nation remembered six million Jews killed by Nazi during the course of the Second World War.
Official commemorations commenced late on Wednesday with a ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Israel.
At the ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared the Nazi Holocaust with Iran’s nuclear threat to Israel.
“People who refuse to see the Iranian threat have learned nothing from the Shoah (Holocaust).”
“They are afraid to speak the truth, which is today, as it was then, that there are people who want to annihilate millions of Jews. The truth is that an Iran in possession of nuclear arms is an existential threat to the State of Israel.”
Elie Wisel, a holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, disapproved of his comments.
“I don’t like this. It is unacceptable and impossible to make comparisons with the Holocaust.”
Over 10,000 youths also gathered in Auschwitz, Poland to commemorate the victims of the genocide at the most infamous of Nazi concentration camps.