JERUSALEM - In a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said today that the world "didn't lift a finger" to stop the Holocaust.

Sharon said Jews learned from the genocide that they can only rely on themselves.

In unusually harsh remarks to parliament, Sharon noted that when the Nazis began deporting Jews from Hungary to the Auschwitz in large numbers in 1944, Allied forces did not bomb the railroad tracks leading to the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. He said that over a period of several weeks, more than 600,000 Jews from Hungary were killed in Auschwitz.

"The sad and terrible conclusion is that no one cared that Jews were being killed," Sharon said.

"At the time of the most terrible test, friends and benefactors didn't lift a finger," he said. "This is the Jewish lesson of the Holocaust."

"The state of Israel has learned this lesson, and since its founding, it has defended itself and its residents, and provides safety to Jews everywhere. We know that we can only rely on ourselves," he said.