The annual Holocaust Remembrance Day is one of the most official days in Israel’s national calendar, with much of the country closing for those two minutes to honor those who suffered at the hands of the Nazi assassination machine. The siren stops Israel’s outdoor life – pedestrians stand in their place, buses stop on busy roads and cars pull on major highways, with drivers standing in the streets with their heads bowed. The siren also heralds the start of the main daytime ceremonies for the gloomy day that began last night with an official opening event at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Ceremonies are also held at schools, public institutions and military bases. At 11 a.m. The “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony in the Knesset begins, an official annual event in which lawmakers read the names of Holocaust victims. Get the Times of Israel Daily E-mail and never miss our top stories By registering, you agree to the terms On Holocaust Remembrance Day, many survivors attend memorial services, share stories with teens, and take part in memorial service in former concentration camps in Europe. This year, the annual March of the Living continues after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to be the last time Holocaust survivors take part in the event. Only eight Holocaust survivors will take part in this March of the Living. Seventy survivors attended the last March of the Living in 2019 in person. International Live March in Poland, with participants marching between Auschwitz I and Birkenau (courtesy) A closing ceremony for the day will be held at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot, a kibbutz created by Holocaust survivors. The main opening ceremony on Wednesday night was attended by Holocaust survivors, President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and other officials. At the ceremony, Israeli leaders called for an end to political divisions and warned against anti-Semitic rhetoric or attempts to compare the massacre of Europe’s Jews with other atrocities. Both Bennett and Herzog focused on a separate Holocaust incident to provoke the greatest, most incomprehensible horror of the Nazi genocide, speaking at Yad Vashem, the national monument and museum of the Israeli Holocaust. Bennett, who has retained power despite losing his parliamentary majority, has spoken out against the politics and racism that have gripped Israel in recent years. He noted that divisions between right-wing and left-wing ideologies had severed ties between Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. “Even in the darkest days of Jewish history, in the hell of destruction, the left and the right have failed to work together. “Each group fought alone against the Germans,” he said. “We must not dismantle Israel from within. “Today, thank God, in the state of Israel, we have an army, a government, a parliament and a people – the people of Israel.” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem as Israel celebrates Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 27, 2022. (Amos Ben Gershom / GPO) Bennett also dismissed Holocaust comparisons, which have become commonplace over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last month, some Israeli lawmakers tore up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he compared his country to the Holocaust during a speech to Israeli politicians. “The Holocaust is an unprecedented event in human history. “I make the effort to say that because as the years go by, more and more serious events are being compared to the Holocaust,” Bennett said. “But no, even the most serious wars today are not the Holocaust and are not like the Holocaust,” he said, without directly mentioning Ukraine. “No event in history, no matter how harsh, compares to the destruction of the Jews of Europe at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators,” Bennett said. History is full of disasters, but the Holocaust stands out in its sole purpose for racial extermination, he said. “Never, in any place or at any time, has one nation acted to destroy another, in such a way that it was so planned, systematic and cold, entirely because of ideology and without any other purpose,” he said. Also speaking Wednesday night in Yad Vashem, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that “the mission to protect the Israeli people is stronger than any ideological debate” and is no less important than Israel’s readiness to attack its nuclear facilities. Iran”. Israeli officials often cite security threats to the country in Holocaust Remembrance Day speeches, Gantz said, “especially Iran, which is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and become a real threat to us. “Indeed, the state of Israel must have military power and moral strength next to it. This power and morality stems from our ability to live as a strong, cohesive society, and not as a people scattered throughout the diaspora, divided and divided. “Our resilience as a society allows and justifies our existence,” Gantz added. In his speech Wednesday, Bennett used a “witness card” of a girl, an official Yad Vashem document describing the basic biographical details of a Jew killed in the Holocaust, to illustrate the depth of the Holocaust horror. President Isaac Herzog addresses the official ceremony for the National Holocaust Remembrance Day in Jerusalem, April 27, 2022. (Screenshot: YouTube) The girl’s first name was left blank on the sheet, her last name was Reich and her birthplace and place of death are listed as Auschwitz, Bennett said. “The circumstances of her death: she was immediately taken from her mother,” the prime minister read. “Age at the time of death: half an hour”. The form was completed by her mother, Irene Reich. Herzog used a photograph of Nazi soldiers and a Ukrainian militiaman executing a Jewish family on the edge of a pit in Ukraine’s Miropol, Ukraine, in 1941, to recall the horror of the Nazi genocide during his speech. In the photo, a mother shakes her little son’s hand, leaning towards him as men shoot her in the back of the head. The boy is barefoot and looks at the trees. Smoke from the fires hides the mother’s face in a spooky plume. Another child is in her arms, barely visible with her polka dot skirt. The killers seem to be having fun. “What did the mother whisper in her little boy’s ear? Did she beg him not to cry? And what about the child? Did he cry? Was he silent? Did you understand? Was he afraid? ” said Herzog. “The photo is silent, but her voice is shouting. It shakes us. We are stunned by the silence “. Photography was the focus of the 2021 book “The Ravine” by historian Wendy Lower. Herzog said he experienced “sadness, anger and pain” when he saw the photo in the book. The Nazis killed more than 1 million Jews in the “Holocaust with bullets” by shooting them in forests and fields, far from the notorious death camps. Herzog referred to the state of Israel as a “beacon” for the Jews of the post-Holocaust world and said the reason for questioning Israel’s right to exist was “not legitimate diplomacy but pure anti-Semitism, which must be eradicated.”
