Hundreds of Polish officials and Jewish and military leaders held a solemn ceremony here on Tuesday to mark the 62nd anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Jews.

During the ceremony, wreaths were placed at the Warsaw monument to the unknown soldier, a monument to Jewish heroes and a Jewish graveyard.

Witold Kulesza of the Polish national memorial institute said the revolt was a fight to defend the freedom and dignity of the people sentenced to death by the Nazis.

Kulesza said that although the uprising failed, it dealt a heavy blow to the invaders.

In autumn 1940, the Nazis forced up to 450,000 Jews to live in a ghetto separated from the outside world by a three-meter-high wall in Warsaw, Poland's capital.

On April 19, 1943, the Jews staged a revolt which was brutally quashed by the Nazis

(Xinhua News Agency April 20, 2005