Presidents of Israel, Poland, and Germany lit candles in Warsaw's historic Nożyk Synagogue

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the presidents of Poland, Israel and Germany lit candles alongside Holocaust survivors and their relatives at the Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw - the only surviving prewar Jewish place of worship in the capital city of Poland.

At present, it serves as the key meeting point of the Warsaw Jewish community. The Nożyk Synagogue is primarily a place of prayer, but also a unique monument on the map of the city.

During the ceremony, Israeli President Isaac Herzog paid tribute to the fallen insurgents and recited a prayer also said by his grandfather, Isaac HaLevi Herzog, when had he visited Poland in 1946 to rescue European Jews who survived the Holocaust.

"We came here, the presidents of the state of Israel, Poland and Germany, to mark this anniversary, the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, to honour the combatants, to honour the fighters, who fought not only for their own honour but for ours, to honour the whole community," Herzog said.

"The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was not the only form of resistance and not the only uprising, just like the culture of Warsaw before the Holocaust was multi-faceted, we had so many of its shades and aspects during the resistance period," Israel's president added.

Herzog, Polish President Andrzej Duda and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also unveiled a plaque commemorating the 80th anniversary as well as 75 years of Israel's statehood.

In 1940, German Nazi occupiers corralled over 400,000 Jews into a small section of the Polish capital, where most were then sent to camps to be killed or died from the conditions within the ghetto.

But on April 19, 1943, hundreds took up arms - the largest Jewish revolt against Nazi Germany during World War II thus commenced.

Their fight against heavily-armed German troops to try to stop the transports to the death camps ended on May 16, when the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground. An estimated 13,000 Jews were killed.