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

During the ceremony, wreaths were placed at the Warsaw monumentto 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.