In the spotlight: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The main ceremony took place at the Monument to Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw's Muranów district and included a litany of names, ecumenical prayers and a wreath-laying.

The memorial service was attended by a number of top  state officials, including Polish and Israeli presidents Lech Kaczyński and Shimon Perez, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Speaker of the Sejm Bronisław Komorowski, Polish and French foreign ministers Radosław Sikorski and Bernard Kouchner as well as Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz. Also present were Marek Edelman, the uprising's last surviving leader, and Irena Sendlerowa, who rescued hundreds of Jewish children from the ghetto.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out on April 19, 1943 and lasted through May 16 of that year. The driving force behind the insurgency was continued German deportations of Jews from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. The first instances of armed resistance were recorded even earlier, in January 1943, but the uprising constituted the largest Jewish effort to resist German plans to liquidate the ghetto.

The insurgents numbered approximately 1,000 poorly armed members of the Jewish resistance movement, which included the Jewish Military Union and the Jewish Combat Organization. Some support also came from outside the ghetto, with Polish resistance units attacking German sentries and providing weapons and munitions.

The insurgency ultimately proved ineffective against the German forces, which included over 2,000 troops as well as armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft. According to the final report of German General Jürgen Stroop, who was charged with suppressing the uprising, around 13,000 Jews were killed during the insurgency. The majority of the survivors were captured and shipped to concentration and extermination camps.