After flying for just one day, the Israeli flag was removed from an Ohio city's flagpole after the mayor met with Arab-American and Muslim groups that objected to the flag's use as a symbol for the "Holocaust Day of Remembrance."

Today, people in the United States and around the world remember the brutal, systematic murder of millions of Jews during World War II by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Mayor James F. McGregor of Gahanna, Ohio, a Columbus suburb, raised the Israeli flag as part of that commemoration. But the symbolic act was short-lived. The flag was taken down after the mayor heard concerns from the Ohio Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Arab Americans of Central Ohio, the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus, the Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio and the Muslim Student Association.

"We want to thank Mayor McGregor for understanding that the desire to honor and remember all those who died at the hands of the Nazis is a completely separate issue from flying the Israeli flag. For the Islamic and Arab communities in Ohio, that flag is a symbol of the ongoing oppression suffered by Palestinian Christians and Muslims," said Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ohio, President Ahmad Al-Akhras, according to a PRNewswire report.

More than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages were wiped off the map by the creation of Israel in 1948, said Al-Akhras. He also noted that yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the Qana massacre in Lebanon, during which Israeli troops, using American weapons, killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians who sought shelter in a U.N. compound.

"Americans cannot, without a strong sense of hypocrisy, praise the principles of Holocaust remembrance on the one hand, and turn a blind eye to the daily atrocities committed by Israel on the other," said Andy Amid, a founding member of the Islamic Council of Ohio, who also attended the meeting.

But members of the Jewish community in America believe the Israeli flag is indeed a legitimate symbol to use when remembering the atrocities suffered by Jews during World War II.

"The Israeli flag is entirely appropriate in remembrance of the Jews who were murdered by the Nazis since the Jewish state, in its founding, is a response to oppression brought upon Jews, both in Europe and the Arab world," said Yitzhak Santis, director of Middle East affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council. "Before, during and after the 1948 war, which was initiated by the Arab states, approximately 850,000 Jewish citizens of Arab states were evicted from Arab countries by Arab governments, and their property was confiscated by these Arab governments. And in some cases, Palestinian refugees moved into the former Jewish neighborhoods of Damascus and Baghdad."

McGregor's office could not be reached for comment.

Holocaust Day of Remembrance, or Yom HaShoah, is commemorated on the 27th day of Nissan -- the first month of the Jewish calendar, falling today. "Shoah" is the Hebrew word for "whirlwind," according to Rabbi Yehudah Prero of Torah.org. This year, the day coincides with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of World War II, during which tens of thousands of Polish Jews lost their lives in a heroic resistance effort.

As part of Hitler's "final solution," meaning the mass murder of all Jews, the Nazis created ghettos to which Jews were literally rounded up and restricted. The Warsaw Ghetto in Poland was at first enclosed with barbed wire, which was later replaced by a brick wall 10 feet high and 11 miles long. By the summer of 1942, nearly 500,000 Jews lived in the ghetto's 840 acres.

In the nearly four weeks, between April 19 and May 16, 1943, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto courageously fought against Nazi death-camp deportations, which were stepped up in April in honor of Hitler's birthday with the intent of clearing the ghetto in three days. Jewish resistance, however, delayed the clearing for nearly a month. Of the Jews captured, the Germans shot 7,000, transported 23,000 to death camps and relocated the remainder to forced-labor camps.