TEL AVIV, Israel -- Sirens blared across Israel early Thursday as the country came to a standstill in an annual ritual honoring the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
People halted where they were walking, and drivers stopped their cars to get out of the vehicles as people bowed their heads in memory of the victims of the Nazi genocide. Ceremonies were planned throughout the day at Israel's national Holocaust memorial, parliament and elsewhere.
Israel was founded in 1948 as a sanctuary for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust. About 165,000 survivors live in Israel, a dwindling population that is widely honored but struggling with poverty.
Ushering in Holocaust memorial day at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett late Wednesday called on the world to stop comparing the Holocaust to other events in history. He spoke after the presidents of both Ukraine and Russia drew parallels between their ongoing war and the genocide during World War II.
"As the years go by, there is more and more discourse in the world that compares other difficult events to the Holocaust. But no," he said. "No event in history, cruel as it may have been, is comparable to the extermination of Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators."
He also warned the country against allowing its deep differences to tear the nation apart.
"My brothers and sisters, we cannot, we simply cannot allow the same dangerous gene of factionalism dismantle Israel from within," Bennett said.
Israel makes great effort to memorialize the victims of the Holocaust and make heroes of those who survived. Restaurants and places of entertainment remain closed on Holocaust memorial day, radios play somber music and TV stations devote their programming to documentaries and other Holocaust-related material.
Additionally, about a third of Israel's Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line, with many sustained by government stipends and donations, according to a group that represents survivors.
In addition to speeches by Bennett, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and others, Wednesday's ceremony featured survivors lighting six torches -- for the 6 million murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. The speaker of Germany's parliament, Baerbel Bas, also attended as a special guest.
BULLET IN MAIL
Bennett's teenage son received a death threat and bullet in the mail, Israeli officials said Thursday, the second such warning against the Israeli leader's family this week.
An Israeli official familiar with the matter confirmed on Thursday that the second threatening letter and bullet had been sent to Yoni Bennett. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Police have imposed a gag order on their investigation, and officials declined to say whether there were any suspects.
The threats have come at a time of deep political divisions in Israel.
Israeli police said that both incidents were being investigated, but gave few other details, including where the items were sent and who might have sent them.
Bennett has been the target of criticism from Israel's hard-line right wing since forming his governing coalition last year.
Bennett's government is made up of eight parties from across the political spectrum, including religious nationalists, centrists and an Islamic party. It is the first Arab party to be part of a governing coalition.
Critics have accused Bennett, who leads a small, religious nationalist party, of abandoning his core hard-line beliefs. One member of his Yamina party was sanctioned this week as a "defector" for repeatedly supporting the opposition in hundreds of votes. Another member of his party recently resigned from the coalition, leaving the fragile alliance without a parliamentary majority.
Bennett formed the coalition last June after four inconclusive elections that underscored the fissures in society over key issues as well as the polarizing effects of Netanyahu's 12-year rule.
Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman of The Associated Press.
Auschwitz survivor Edward Mosberg (center) attends the annual March of the Living Holocaust observance Thursday in Oswiecim, Poland, accompanied by Polish President Andrzej Duda (left center). Only eight survivors and some 2,500 young Jews and non-Jews took part in the scaleddown march because of the war in neighboring Ukraine. In Israel, sirens blared and activities halted for the annual ritual honoring the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust. (AP/Czarek Sokolowski)