Israelis memorialized today the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust during World War II. Entertainment places were closed down, memorial assemblies were held and teachers devoted the day to talking to their students about the facts and lessons of the Holocaust.
The day began at 8 a.m. with a two-minute siren which brought the country to a total standstill. Work and traffic stopped and flags were lowered to half most. People throughout the country stood of attention in memory of the six million Holocaust victims. The major memorial assembly, which would close the day, was scheduled at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetoot (the ghetto fighters) in the Western Galilee.
A ceremony to commemorate the martyrs and resistance fighters was held last night at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It was attended by President Yitzhak Navon, rabbis, Cabinet ministers and Knesset members. The memory of 2-1/2-year-old Eyal Gluska who was killed by Palestinian terrorists last week at Kibbutz Misgav Am cost its shadow over the event. Knesseter Gideon Hausner, chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, compared the Palestinian terrorists to the Nazis “who pulled babies from the arm of their mothers…and used them as targets.” He added that both the Nazis and the Palestinian terrorists singled out children as their primary victims.
Education Minister Zevolun Hammer said: “The great loss of a third of our people remains before our eyes, cutting into our flesh and making all of us orphans.” Dr. Yitzhak Arod, executive chairman of Yad Vashem, denounced attempts in various parts of the world to deny the Holocaust.
ACTIVITIES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY
Six torches were kindled, and six floodlights were beamed to form a pillar of light in the sky as a symbol of the martyrs and the heroes. Israel TV broadcast last Wednesday night video taped extracts of the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961. The program was culled out of 90 hours of video recordings taped during the trial.
Hausner, the prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, said following the broadcast; “We did not just try a man. We tried a whole period. This film should be shown over and over again. Both the Jewish people and the entire world should be perpetually faced with the era of violence in the 20th Century.”
At the Yad Vashem Memorial today, concentration camp and resistance survivors formed a guard of honor at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial. Hundreds of students, youth and tourists visited the Holocaust and Resistance Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetoot. Others visited Yad Vashem. Each school devoted one hour for a talk about the Holocaust and for ceremonies in which candies were lit in memory of the six million victims.
At the Ashdod harbor, a team of some 100 stevedores gathered for an assembly of remembrance prior to their work. Worshippers at the Great Lutheran Church in East Jerusalem included in their Sunday prayers a short ceremony of memorial. The priest explained the significance of the day. The audience–some 300 worshippers and pilgrims, mostly German-rose for a minute of silence.
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