As several hundred survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp celebrated the 24th anniversary of their liberation in 1945 at a dinner here, Joseph Rosenhaft, president of the world-wide Federation of Bergen-Belsen associations, announced that the 25th anniversary will be commemorated in June 1970, with a pilgrimage of more than 300 survivors to the unmarked graves of the thousands of martyred dead who fell in the Nazi Holocaust.
“We will return to Germany, some for the first time since their liberation, for only one purpose: to say a Yahrzeit for our dead brethren,” said Mr. Rosensaft. “We will light a candle, large enough for the entire world to see, as an act of remembrance–a part of our continuing effort to see that the world does not forget to remember the six million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide.”
Principal speaker at the 24th anniversary commemoration was Rabbi Joachim Prinz, himself a German refugee, who attacked the “conspiracy of silence” that he said seemed to be developing throughout the world about the Nazi murder of six million Jews. After having made retribution through the United Nations 1947 Palestine partition decision, resulting in the establishment of Israel, Dr. Prinz said, the world now prefers to forget “the stigma of guilt that all people of the world share by not having taken steps to halt the Nazi slaughter of Jews.”
Observance of Holocaust Day in Israel was concluded Tuesday evening at a concert in Tel Aviv attended by Prime Minister Golda Meir, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. Transport Minister Moshe Carmel and other notables. They heard Nehema Lifshitz, a Yiddish folksinger from Eastern Europe in her Israeli debut. In Antwerp, Simon Wiesenthal, head of the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna, memorialized the fallen six million Jewish victims of Nazism at an assembly arranged by the Belgian Zionist Federation.
The 26th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto was officially observed in New York Tuesday by proclamation of Gov. Rockefeller. In Toronto, some 2,700 packed Sharei Shomayim Synagogue at memorial services arranged by the Canadian Jewish Congress with Elie Wiesel, the novelist, as principal speaker.
In Buenos Aires, Argentine Jews filled the Hebraica Theatre at memorial services organized by DAIA, the central Jewish representative organization, the Buenos Aires Jewish community and the Argentine Zionist Organization. Six huge candles, each representing a million Jewish victims of Nazism, were lit. Yosef Govrin, Israeli charge d’affaires, told the assemblage that a “great power” was using anti-Semitism today as an instrument of its political strategy and was openly aiding those who proclaimed the destruction of Israel to be their goal. Dr. Gregorio Faigon, president of DAIA, compared the anti-Jewish hatred of Arab leaders with the fanaticism of Hitler.
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.
