Germany's president on Wednesday sought pardon for his nation's World War II crimes in comments on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the first German president to speak at the commemorations in the Polish capital, joined Polish and Israeli heads of state to mark 80 years since Jewish insurgents' doomed uprising against Nazi German occupiers.

"I stand before you today and ask for your forgiveness for the crimes committed by Germans here," said Steinmeier, speaking at the annual ceremony held in Warsaw's former Jewish district.

The German president also blasted his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for waging war in Ukraine.

"The Russian president has broken international law," Steinmeier said. "This war brings immeasurable suffering, violence, destruction and death to the people of Ukraine."

The official ceremony took place at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, which is located at the site of several of the uprising's armed clashes.

The Warsaw Jews launched their armed revolt against the Nazis on April 19, 1943, preferring to die fighting than to be sent to a death camp.

It was the largest single act of Jewish resistance against the Germans during World War II.

"We must remember," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, adding that Holocaust memory is not relative.

"Absolute evil existed, in the form of the Nazis and their accomplices. And absolute good existed, in the form of the victims and the rebels, from every nation."

Around 7,000 Jews are estimated to have died in the battles and another 6,000 in the fires started by the Nazis in the ghetto. (AFP)