Photo: Rolf E. Staerk / Shutterstock.com

This evening we will be lighting candles in memory of victims of the Shoah for the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day.

We remember the six million Jews and five million others who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by the Nazi regime, and for the Jewish resistance in that period.

We also commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In April 1943, as German forces prepared to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto, Jewish people barricaded themselves in bunkers and resisted the Nazis. Brave and constant fighting ended in the uprising being quashed and the ghetto burned to the ground. Those who survived the ghetto were deported to concentration camps and killing centers.