More than 5,000 Israelis from all parts of the country gathered at Har Hazikaron, near Mt. Herzl, to pay tribute to the memory of the 6,000,000 European Jews murdered by the Nazis. They gathered in Remembrance Square, established by the National Memorial Assembly to hear services and addresses by Israel leaders. Among those present were President Ben Zvi and members of the Cabinet and Knesset.
The chairman of the assembly Education Minister Prof. Ben Zion Dinur, reminded his listeners that it was their duty never to forget the 6,000,000 martyrs. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, Jewish Agency chairman, declared that it was not only their duty to salute the dead, but to sit in judgment on the generation of Jews who survived. Speaking for the Government, Minister of Religions Moshe Shapiro hailed those who died fighting the Nazis.
Thousands of persons gathered at Yad Mordecai, overlooking the Gaza strip, to hear the local inhabitants memorialize the 6,000,000 Jewish martyrs of Nazism by swearing that they would defend their homes to their last drop of blood.
Their oath was taken at the foot of the Mordecai Anilevitz Memorial, in an area where the constant threat of the Egyptian fedayeen marauders had curtailed the usual ceremonies. Among the speakers at the ceremonies were former leaders of the Ghetto fighters group. A similar ceremony was also held at the kibbutz of the Ghetto fighters.
The thirteenth anniversary of the revolt of the Warsaw Ghetto against the German oppressors was marked in a moving ceremony here attended by large numbers of the local Jewish community. A special liturgical service was followed by addresses by Dr. Moises Goldmann, president of the DAIA, central representative body of Argentine Jewry; Mark Turkow, World Jewish Congress representative; and Israel Ambassador Dr. Arigh Kubovy.
The Israeli envoy told the meeting that the Jewish people must learn the lesson of this desperate revolt–to support Israel. This, he asserted, was the moral legacy of the Warsaw heroes. The meeting was concluded with the recitation of Kaddish and the singing of the Partisans’ Hymn.
South African Jewry mourned the loss of Europe’s six million Jews under the Nazi persecution, with meetings in centers of Jewish population in all parts of the Union. A crowded City Hall meeting here heard an address by Rabbi J. H. Kahanemann, the rabbi of Ponevezer, who is now on a visit here from Israel, and who himself narrowly escaped death in the holocaust. He described the catastrophe which destroyed “the very flower of the Jewish people.”
N. Philips, chairman of the South African Board of Jewish Deputies, presided. Memorial addresses were also delivered by Edel Horowitz, vice president of the Board, and Abe Grabman, chairman of the South African Zionist Youth Council. Readings from the literature of the period and the singing of Partisan songs closed the meeting.
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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.