Israel comes to a standstill to mark Holocaust memorial day

Israel came to a standstill on Thursday, halting the morning bustle for two minutes as sirens blared to honour the millions murdered during the Holocaust. 

In an annual ritual at 10am local time, pedestrians froze in place and drivers stopped and stood in silence beside their vehicles, honouring the six million Jews and other victims killed by the Nazis during World War Two. 

Ceremonies were planned throughout the day at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, parliament and elsewhere.

Entertainment venues and restaurants close on Holocaust memorial day, while radios play solemn music and TV stations air documentaries and other Holocaust-related programmes. 

Speaking at Yad Vashem on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the Holocaust is the "ultimate, absolute expression of thousands of years of antisemitism". 

President of the German parliament Baerbel Bas, a special guest at the event, said that "a special obligation arises from Germany's historical guilt". 

"Israel's security and the fight against all forms of antisemitism are part of our national identity. We will not forget," she said. 

About 161,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel, according to official figures.

'Not comparable to the Holocaust'

In his address on Wednesday, Bennett also rejected any attempt to draw parallels between the Nazi genocide and current conflicts. 

"I take the trouble to say this because as the years go by, there is more and more discourse in the world that compares other difficult events to the Holocaust," he said.

"But no. Even the most difficult wars today are not the Holocaust and are not comparable to the Holocaust." 

In an address to Israeli lawmakers last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, compared Russian aggression in his country to the Holocaust, drawing immediate criticism from some officials in Israel.