Nation mourns six million Jews killed in Holocaust
jpost.com
The nation stood in silence for two minutes Monday
morning, as sirens wailed marking Holocaust
Remembrance Day in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Traffic came to a standstill nationwide as drivers
stopped their cars and stood in attention, while
workers exited their stores, and passersby stood
motionless in their place.
In a day filled with somber ceremonies, the names of the Jews known to have been killed in the Holocaust were read out at Yad Vashem and at the Knesset, as the Israeli flag flew at half-staff nationwide.
Throughout the day, as the various memorials went on, radio stations played mournful music, while television stations broadcast Holocaust-related documentaries and movies.
In Poland, thousands of Jewish teens, draped with
Israeli flags, marched through the Auschwitz
concentration camp for the annual March of the Living on Monday afternoon.
Back in Israel, a street in the northern Jerusalem
neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev was named in honor of a Swiss righteous Righteous Among the Nations who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
The city ceremony honoring the late Paul Grueninger, a former Swiss police commander who provided more than 3,600 Jewish refugees with desperately-needed papers, was boycotted by the Swiss Ambassador to Israel, Ernst Iten, because the street is located in an area of Jerusalem made part of the city after 1967.
Despite the Swiss government boycott, a group of 15 Swiss educators on a two week Holocaust seminar at Yad Vashem's International School pointedly took part in the modest ceremony, which was hosted by Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski, after reading of the incident in Monday's Jerusalem Post.
The day's events were officially closed with a
ceremony at the Ghetto Fighters House at Kibbutz
Lohamei Haghetaot near Nahariya.
Talkback (moderated). Please include your first and last names, your city and country.
Sukher Balter, San Francisco, USA:
My Grandfather Balter Aaron and his wife Sobel were murdered by the nazi in the Ghetto Kishinev in 1943..In all in the WWII were kiled 27 members of my relatives who lived in Bessarabia and Romania.In 1903 my ancestors [the Family of the Grandfather of my Father] were beaten and lost all theyr propreties in the Pogrom in Calaras[Bessarabia] and remained alive only runing from his home,stoping a train with their bodies on the railes.
My Father Zwi ben Aaron Balter was 14 years-after WWII- the President of Jewish Community of the city Kishinev.He was the first person who reintroduced the backing of Matza for the Jews of the City in the 50-s for what was persecuted.
He and my Mother are buried in Israel.
Israel is in my Hearth.I strongly believe that God will bless America so long how America wil bless Israel.
Israel must be strong and united.I hate the left who undermined the existence of the country.But I'm sure,that in despite ol all evils-Israel will survive.And this only is the guarantie of the surviving of the Jewish People.
NEVER AGAIN!!
Michael A. Nissenbaum,MD, Maine, USA: As a child of a Holocaust survivor, I applaud Mr. Sharon's words today.
It is a great shame that the did not act on them when he came to power, but rather sickeningly looked over his shoulder for any hint of European and especially American displeasure, after every tentative and small action aimed against the spiritual heirs of the Nazis.
I, and many others I am sure, hope to see a more vigorous defense of Jewish lives by the one person who carries in his hands the day to day fate of not only millions of Jews in Israel, but also the central icon of identity for essentially all living and future Jews - Medinat Israel.
Roger G. Bensman (Hebrew name is Gershon ben Benjamin.), Houston, Texas: Not so long ago I became aware that 31 members of my Grandfather Joseph Berman's family were rounded up by the Nazis in Latvia in 1941, shot dead, buried in a trench, leaving just one survivor, our cousin Tova, who somehow survived and made it to Palestine, after being turned back by the British authorities to Cypress. When I last visited Israel, we had our little reunion, meeting for the first time at Hadera. There are those who so hate the Jews that they would attempt to take even the Holocaust, our greatest tradgedy and destruction, and state that it did not happen and that we just made the whole thing up. Certainly it would be for a blessing were it so and that it did not happen. But it did. And it will pain us all for the rest of our lives, we who have to live with this travesty.
In fact, we Jews remember even as there are those of our enemies who wish not to remember. Perhaps they find us and our Holocaust some kind of embarrassment. They are probably embarrassed for themselves and for what their forebears did in all their barbarity. We are still here. We still remember. To our enemies, we say: NEVER AGAIN. LET OUR ENEMIES BEWARE.... |
