WORCESTER, Mass. - Saturday marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the Jewish Federation of Central Massachusetts marked the day Friday by raising the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Flag at Worcester City Hall.

The day commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, where six million Jewish people were killed by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

Steven Schimmel, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Central Massachusetts, spoke before the flag raising.

“In a time of rising antisemitism and at a time when we are left with fewer survivors, those who had the first-hand experience of the terror of those days, it is incumbent on us to use opportunities like this not only to remember those who perished, celebrate those stood up bravely against Nazism, but also to ensure the story is never, ever forgotten,” Schimmel said.

Jan. 27 is when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.

President Joe Biden released a statement saying this year, the charge to remember the Holocaust and the scourge of antisemitism is more pressing than ever amid war in the Middle East.