BUDAPEST (JTA) — For the first time in Hungary's history, the nation's parliament has hosted a ceremony to commemorate Hungarian Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Soon after an international conference on the Holocaust was held in Stockholm last year, the Hungarian government declared April 16 as the nation's annual Holocaust Memorial Day.

The commemoration marks the date in 1944 when the Nazis established the first Jewish ghetto in Hungary, in the northeastern town of Munkacs, which is now a part of Ukraine.

About 600,000 Hungarian Jews died during the Holocaust.

Today, the Jewish community, the largest in Central Europe, numbers between 80,000 and 130,000.