Israel came to a complete standstill at 10 a.m., as a two-minute siren rang out across the country for Yom HaShoah in honor of the six million Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.
Each year on this day, traffic on roads and highways throughout Israel grinds to a halt and pedestrians stop in place to bow their heads in silence.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials observed the sombre moment of remembrance at a wreath-laying ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
Knesset members convened for the traditional “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony, in which the names of Holocaust victims are read aloud.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people from around the world were to participate in the March of the Living, an annual procession around the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland.
This will be followed by an official ceremony commemorating the victims of the Birkenau camp – one of the 40 sub-camps in the Auschwitz complex where Jews were murdered en masse in gas chambers.