US President Barack Obama has said Israel's Holocaust memorial illustrates the depravity to which man can sink.
However, he said it is also a reminder of the rescuers and the "righteous among nations who refused to be bystanders".
Mr Obama visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as he wrapped up a three-day trip to Israel.
He said the memorial represents a call to confront bigotry and racism, "especially anti-Semitism".
Mr Obama laid a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, who died in 1904 before realising his dream of a Jewish homeland.
Officials said the visit was aimed at correcting an impression the president had given in a speech in Cairo in 2009.
In the speech in 2009 it appeared to argue that the legitimacy of the Jewish state stemmed from the Holocaust.
"Nothing could be more powerful," Mr Obama said in Yad Vashem's Hall of Names, a memorial to the six million Jews killed by the Nazis in World War II.
He also laid a wreath at the grave of former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a right-wing Jew in 1995.
"Sometimes it is harder to embark on peace then to embark on war," Mr Rabin's daughter, Dalia, quoted Mr Obama as telling the family at the grave site.
After a final round of talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, he will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas again during a visit to Bethlehem to see the Church of the Nativity.
Strong winds blowing clouds of dust grounded Mr Obama's helicopter forcing him to make the journey by motorcade.
He is due to travel to Jordan later today to meet with King Abdullah, a key US Middle East ally, about an array of pressing regional problems, including the civil war in neighbouring Syria.
Separately, Hamas complained to Egypt after Israel suspended part of a Cairo-brokered truce agreement by halving Palestinian access to fishing waters in response to a rocket attack from Gaza.
The attack on the border town of Sderot yesterday caused no casualties.
It was claimed by a small al-Qaeda-linked faction that has challenged Hamas' rule in Gaza.
Israel shut the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing on the Gaza border and enforced a newly restricted 5km wide fishing zone.
The zone had been extended to 11km as part of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that ended an eight-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in November, in which 166 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed.
"We have informed Cairo of this violation and we are waiting to hear a clear position from Egyptian mediators on this," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
An Egyptian official confirmed that the Hamas complaint had been received, saying Israel had complained separately about the rocket attack - the second of its kind since November.
The official said Cairo would contact both sides to "restore their commitment to the truce".
