Warsaw: A ceremony was held Friday here in the Polish capital to honour Jews who fought overwhelming Nazi German forces 70 years ago in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, BBC reported.
Sirens wailed and church bells tolled in the city, where several hundred Jews battled the Nazis during World War II.
About 13,000 Jews died in the ghetto when the Nazis reduced it to rubble. Survivors were sent to death camps.
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski praised the Jews` "last stand" in a speech at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes.
"This was the last stand of people deprived of dignity and hope. Hundreds of insurgents stood to defend the last remnants of human freedom," Komorowski said.
In 1942, before the uprising, the Nazi SS deported about 300,000 Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka camp, where they were murdered in gas chambers.
To coincide with the uprising anniversary, Warsaw is opening a new "Museum of the History of the Polish Jews".
The museum will chronicle the 1,000-year presence of Jews in Poland, a once large and thriving community mostly wiped out by the Holocaust.
IANS
