Holocaust Remembrance Day marked
At a ceremony, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Holocaust deniers would never be allowed to carry out another Holocaust of the Jewish people.
Remembrance ceremonies were held across the world, including at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Poland.
Thousands of young Jews and elderly survivors took park in the March of the Living, walking from Auschwitz to the nearby death camp at Birkenau.
During the two-minute silence in Israel, pedestrians stopped in their tracks, drivers pulled over and got out of their cars and people in offices rose to stand next to their desks.
At the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, survivors Lia and Iudit - twin sisters - lit a torch to open the remembrance day ceremony, before Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu laid a wreath.
In the Hall of Remembrance names of the victims were recited.
In Poland, about 7,000 people walked the two miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Among the participants was Israeli Vice-Prime Minister Silvan Shalom.