Poland has handed over to Israel street cobblestones with a direct link to one of the most famous symbols of Jewish resistance against Nazi persecution during World War II.

If those stones could talk, they would recollect the last road of thousands of people to death

Shevach Weiss Israeli ambassador to Poland

Hundreds of the stones from Warsaw's main Jewish ghetto, along with lengths of tram rails which ran through the streets, were handed over to the director of the Yad Vashem museum by the Polish capital's Mayor, Wojciech Kozak.

The museum plans to use them to recreate a 130 metre ((140 yard) long street in Jerusalem.

"Before the war, people were walking on those stones, children were playing," said Shevach Weiss, the Israeli ambassador to Poland.

"If those stones could talk, they would recollect the last road of thousands of people to death."

Commemoration

More than 400,000 Jewish people lived in the ghetto during World War II, many of whom died from disease or starvation.

In 1943, an uprising against Nazi occupation of Warsaw was brutally crushed, and large numbers of the Jewish population were sent to the Nazi concentration camp at Treblinka.

The Yad Vashem institute was established in 1953 to honour victims of the Holocaust.