The official commemoration in New York of the 18th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was held here tonight with the lighting of six candles, each representing 1,000,000 Jews murdered on orders of Adolf Eichmann. The candles were lit by survivors of the Nazi concentration camps and of the Warsaw Ghetto at a ceremony held at the Statler-Hilton Hotel.
April 19 has been designated by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor Robert F. Wagner as the official day of commemoration in New York State and New York City. The designations were made in proclamations issued to the Congress for Jewish Culture which, with the Jewish Labor Committee and the Workmen’s Circle, sponsored the memorial. Speakers of all three organizations addressed the meeting tonight.
The uprising was described by President Kennedy, in a message read at the meeting, as an “epoch act of courage” which “left a permanent impression in the memories of men.”
Hugh Gaitskell, British Labor Party leader, declared in another message to the memorial meeting that the Jews who fought in the uprising “died as free men, offering themselves nobly as part of the great sacrifice to which we owe liberties today. Their example inspires us in our continuing struggle to banish totalitarianism and racial intolerance from the world.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
