Never Again: Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day
People gather from all over the world to take part in March of the Living in Poland; Israel to begin remembrance day at 8 pm with state ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.
People from all over the world have gathered in Poland for the annual March of the Living event at the Auschwitz extermination camp, while in Israel preparations were being made Wednesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Beginning on Wednesday evening, Israel – and the whole world – will remember the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust 70 years ago and vow never again.
Holocaust Memorial events in Israel, which this year has been given the title "The Anguish of Liberation and Return to Life," will begin at 8 pm local time with a state ceremony held at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Holocaust survivors and their families will participate in the event.
During the ceremony, six Holocaust survivors will each light a remembrance candle, accompanied by their grandchildren, with each candle representing one million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Another ceremony will take place at the Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon will take part in the ceremony.
During the ceremony, six Holocaust survivors who escaped the Nazis by using fake identities adopted during their youth will light remembrance torches. One of them is Shlomo Perel, who took a picture of Adolf Hitler when the German leader arrived at a base where Perel had been serving as at translator for the German army.
On Thursday at 10 am local time, the sound of sirens blaring will be heard all across Israel for two minutes, as part of an annual custom to remember the victims of the Holocaust.
Immediately afterwards, a wreath laying ceremony will be conducted at Yad Vashem and at 10:30 am, the annual "Unto Every Person There is a Name" ceremony, during which names of those who perished in the Holocaust will be read aloud, will take place at Yad Vashem. The general public is invited to take part and read names during the ceremony.
A similar ceremony will take place at the Knesset at 11 am. President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein will take part in the Knesset's name reading ceremony.
At 1 in the afternoon, the Central Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony, which is open to the public, will take place at Yad Vashem. Later in the afternoon, at 5:30 pm, memorials conducted by Israel's youth movements will be held at Yad Vashem.
At 7 pm, a final service will be held at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai along with another ceremony to close the days events to be held at the Ghetto Fighters' Museum at the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz.
Marching for hope
English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Dutch and Hebrew were heard in the Polish cities of Krakow and Katowice on Tuesday night, adjacent to Auschwitz, as visitors from all over the world arrived in Poland to mark 70 years since the end of World War II and the Holocaust.
The many languages heard on the eve of the March of the Living, during which thousands march from Auschwitz to Birkenau to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, is a testimony to the great diversity of visitors who came to participate in the annual event.
The March of the Living will begin on Thursday at 2 pm local time. Tens of thousands of people – Jews and non-Jews, elderly and young, from Israel and from all over the world – will march side by side and participate in a ceremony to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Pope Francis sent a message on Tuesday in support of the marchers. "The organizers of the march not only remember and respect the memory of the murdered but rather they bring hope and life to all," wrote the Pope in the first papal message to participants since the establishment of the march 27 years ago.
The pope's message was received with excitement among the participants.
"It's an important message," said the chairman of the march Dr. Shmuel Rosenman. "I hope that next year the pope will march with us."
Memories at home
More than 100,000 people will sit in their living rooms in Israel and across the world on Wednesday and take part in a project called Memories@Home. The project has people host a local Holocaust survivor in their residences. The survivor shares his or her story, and then the guests participate in some form of artistic expression -- a song, shared text or short film -- and then hold an open discussion that has one rule: every statement is welcome.
In the past week, thousands of people signed up to host a Holocaust survivor on Holocaust Remembrance day.
The project hopes that the intimate setting will be a way for young people in Israel to connect to Jewish and universal values.
The Memories@Home project has also opened up Holocaust Remembrance Day to groups that were previously sidelined and did not have a way to participate in the commemoration – prisons, abuse shelters, hospitals and Israeli travelers located around the world.
Now, Israelis traveling in India and South Africa will host a gathering and commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day far from home.
Furthermore, the project also lets survivors from North Africa serve as speakers during the event – a way to include them in Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day.
At 8 pm local time, Ynet broadcast the story of Mordechai Ciechanower, 91, who was born in the town of Wachovia Mazowiecki and worked as a roof fixer of Auschwitz barracks in order to stay alive during the Holocaust.
Mordechai was freed from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945, on this day 70 years ago. In 1945, he made Aliyah to Israel as a British soldier with a fake identity.
Ynet also broadcast the story of Zsuzsi Kastner at 8:45 pm local time. Zsuzsi is the daughter of Dr. Rudolf Israel Kasztner – a Jewish-Hungarian journalist who is credited for helping Jews escape Europe during the Holocaust and was later assassinated after an Israeli court accused him of collaborating with the Nazis.
Kastner was one of the leaders of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee (Va'adat Ezrah Vehatzalah), which smuggled Jewish refugees from Hungary during World War II.
Israel's Supreme Court overturned the decision made by the lower court in 1958. Zsuzsi was 11 when her father was killed.
