During the ceremony six torches were lit by survivors in recognition of the 6 million Jews who were killed in one of the worst genocides in human history. Two of these survivors were twin sisters who managed to live through the monstrous Auschwitz death camp and experiments by Dr. Joseph Mengele. Speeches were also made as well as low-key musical accompaniments.

However, the memorial was slightly overshadowed by the events in the city of Geneva in Switzerland earlier in the day. The United Nations anti-racism conference saw the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the keynote speaker, being the only head of state to attend. Whilst the conference aims to fight racism in all its forms, it is in fact merely a forum for anti-Semitism and attacks on Israel’s existence.

“The conference opening today in Geneva constitutes an acceptance of racism, rather than the fight against it, and its main speaker is Ahmadinejad, who calls for the annihilation of Israel and denies the Holocaust,” said Israeli President Shimon Peres.

New Prime Minister Binyamin Netnayahu followed by criticising the Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz who had met and shook hands with the Iranian tyrant.

“I turn to you, the Swiss president, and ask you: How can you meet someone who denies the Holocaust and wishes for a new holocaust to occur?”

A number of countries including the United States, Israel, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and New Zealand had refused to go to Geneva at all. During the speech, many more delegates walked out minutes after Ahmadinejad began a racist tirade against Zionism and the Jewish State’s very being.

Afterwards, the United States deputy ambassador to the UN, Alejandro Wolff, said the speech was “inaccurate”, as well as showing disregard towards the UN, and “does a grave injustice to the Iranian nation and the Iranian people”.

The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had said before the conference started that if the meeting was to be a repetition of the intolerance and Jew hatred seen in Durban in 2001, then the French delegates would walk out. They were to do just that.

“The defence of human rights and the fight against all types of racism are too important for the United Nations not to unite against all forms of hate speech, against all perversion of this message. Faced with attitudes like that which the Iranian president has just adopted, no compromise is possible.” said Kouchner after Ahmadinejad’s speech.

At 10am tomorrow morning a siren will sound across Israel and for two minutes everything will come to a silent stand still as a mark of respect for those who died in the Holocaust.