The commemoration of the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day began tonight with a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem, and Israeli leaders, addressing the crowd, called for unity.

This year, Yom Hashoah, as the day is called in Hebrew, is dedicated to “Jewish resistance during the Holocaust” and coincides with the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.

President of Israel Isaac Herzog called for unity in Jewish society and not to forget the horrors of the “Nazi monster”.

Herzog also said that even in times of greatest misunderstandings about politics and religion, Israelis should never compare their opponents to the Nazis.

“I appeal to you citizens of Israel with a simple prayer: let us spare these holy days, which begin today and end on Independence Day, from any misunderstanding, let us come together, as always, in partnership and mourning, in remembrance,” the president said, apparently alluding to the mass demonstrations against the justice reform plan of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that have been going on for more than three months.

After Herzog, he spoke to Netanyahu, who praised the survivors of the Holocaust and the Jewish victory, the result of which, he said, was “a free democratic country, a Jewish state.”

He also assessed that calls for the destruction of the Jewish people did not end with the Holocaust and that they are now “coming from the terrifying regime in Tehran”, comparing current Iran with Nazi Germany.

“That’s why we fight against every (Iranian) nuclear agreement,” said the Israeli leader, but like Herzog, he also appealed for national unity.

Six Holocaust survivors then told their stories and lit six torches, each in memory of the one million Jews killed by the Nazis and their collaborators in World War II.

According to the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, at the end of last year there were about 15.3 million Jews living in the world, including seven million in the Jewish state, which is almost 46 percent.

Outside of Israel, most of them live in the USA, about six million.

There are 147,199 Holocaust survivors and victims of anti-Semitic acts during the Holocaust living in Israel, according to the Bureau of Statistics.

Before the Second World War, 16.6 million Jews lived in the world, including 449,000 in today’s territory of Israel, according to Israeli media.

On the occasion of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day on Tuesday, the piercing sound of sirens across the country will mark the start of the delivery of mail to those killed with a two-minute silence.