BICOM

Israel is marking its annual Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day today, remembering the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust (known in Israel as the Shoah). At 10am a one-minute siren will sound across the country, followed by a wreath laying ceremony at Yad Vashem, the national holocaust museum. Throughout the day, the president, prime minister and other public figures will read the names of holocaust victims from the Knesset podium. In Poland, several thousand young Jewish people from Israel and around the world will participate in the March of the Living in Poland. They will walk from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the gas chambers at the neigbouring Birkenau camp. Holocaust Memorial Day events will be formally concluded at an assembly in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, which was founded by Jewish resistance fighters who survived the Holocaust.

At last night’s opening ceremony at Yad Vashem, President Shimon Peres said, “We came today to say Kaddish (the traditional mourners’ prayer) in memory of our beloved ones who were killed in the Holocaust. We came to say and to swear ‘never again’. We came to say that we are a peaceful people who can defend itself.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu stressed the parallels he sees between the Nazi persecution of European Jews and the Iranian threat to the State of Israel. “An Iran armed with nuclear weapons is an existential threat to the State of Israel”, he said, “and a political threat to other countries in the region and to world peace. Iran must be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons.” He added, “The truth is that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons. It is the duty of the whole world, but above and beyond, it is our duty.”