Israel to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day
Visitors are seen in the Hall of Names, at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
Israel will begin commemorations of Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday evening with a state ceremony to remember the six million Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and to honor the remaining survivors of WW2 atrocities.
A state ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day will be held at 8:00 p.m. local time atop Warsaw Ghetto Square on the Mount of Remembrance at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and Memorial.
Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin will deliver remarks at the ceremony, during which six Holocaust survivors will light six memorial torches while their stories of survival are shown by video.
Netanyahu met the six torchbearers Bela Eizenman, Shaul Lubovitz, Fanny Ben-Ami, Menachem Haberman, Sara Shapira and Yehuda Mimon, on Tuesday evening.
“Your stories are stories of awful tragedy and supreme heroism. You met with cold, suffering and tribulations and you overcame them. You triumphed. We triumphed. I will never forget this. My wife’s family, her father’s entire family, was wiped out,” Netanyahu told them.
The state ceremony Wednesday evening will include musical performances, an IDF Paratroopers’ Honor Guard and the traditional recitation of chapter from Psalms, the Kaddish (mourner’s prayer) and the El Maleh Rahamim, the Jewish prayer for the souls of the martyrs.
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