Sirens sound as Israel stops to remember the Holocaust
Source: Agencies |
April 13, 2010, Tuesday
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THE mournful wail of air raid sirens pierced the air yesterday, bringing hectic Israel to a standstill as the country built on the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust remembered the 6 million Jews who perished in World War II.
Melancholy music floated over the airwaves and tales of the fast-dwindling number of Holocaust survivors dominated the media as the world's largest survivor community mourned the dead. Schools and military bases held memorial ceremonies, and restaurants, cafes and theaters were shut. During the two-minute siren heard across the land, drivers switched off their engines and others stopped their daily activities to stand to attention.
The front page of the Yediot Ahronot daily carried a black-and-white photo of a bearded Polish Jew, wrapped in a prayer shawl, kneeling before two Nazi soldiers, his arms raised, fists clenched, before he was executed.
The man was the maternal grandfather of Meir Dagan, chief of the Mossad spy agency, who said: "I see that photo every day and vow that something like that will not happen again."
At the memorial day's opening ceremony on Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derided the world's response to Iran's nuclear program as "limp" and drew a link to the Holocaust. "If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that we must not be silent or be deterred in the face of evil," Netanyahu said.
United States President Barack Obama issued a statement on Sunday honoring the memory of "those who endured the horrors" of the Nazi atrocities and calling on all people to prevent genocide and "confront anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms."
Sixty-five years after World War II, about 207,000 aging survivors, many of them destitute and alone, live in Israel, down 63,000 from just two years earlier.
Yad Vashem, Israel's state Holocaust memorial authority, picked "Voices of the Survivors" as the theme of this year's commemoration.
"The voice of the survivors is the link that binds the painful and tormented history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to the future, to hope and to rebirth," Yad Vashem said.
At the Israeli parliament yesterday, Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, other officials and survivors read names of loved ones who perished.
At Yad Vashem, officials and survivors laid wreaths at the monument to the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, the largest insurgency during the Holocaust, ultimately crushed by the Germans.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center yesterday praised Germany for bringing accused Nazi war criminals John Demanjuk and Heinrich Boere to trial over the past year, but said a "lack of political will" continues to be the major obstacle to punishing others.
Efraim Zuroff, who coordinates the center's research on Nazi war criminals, said at least 77 Nazi war criminals have been convicted since 2001 and hundreds of new investigations have been initiated. The statistics, Zuroff said, defies assumption that it is too late to bring Nazi murderers to justice.
Melancholy music floated over the airwaves and tales of the fast-dwindling number of Holocaust survivors dominated the media as the world's largest survivor community mourned the dead. Schools and military bases held memorial ceremonies, and restaurants, cafes and theaters were shut. During the two-minute siren heard across the land, drivers switched off their engines and others stopped their daily activities to stand to attention.
The front page of the Yediot Ahronot daily carried a black-and-white photo of a bearded Polish Jew, wrapped in a prayer shawl, kneeling before two Nazi soldiers, his arms raised, fists clenched, before he was executed.
The man was the maternal grandfather of Meir Dagan, chief of the Mossad spy agency, who said: "I see that photo every day and vow that something like that will not happen again."
At the memorial day's opening ceremony on Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derided the world's response to Iran's nuclear program as "limp" and drew a link to the Holocaust. "If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that we must not be silent or be deterred in the face of evil," Netanyahu said.
United States President Barack Obama issued a statement on Sunday honoring the memory of "those who endured the horrors" of the Nazi atrocities and calling on all people to prevent genocide and "confront anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms."
Sixty-five years after World War II, about 207,000 aging survivors, many of them destitute and alone, live in Israel, down 63,000 from just two years earlier.
Yad Vashem, Israel's state Holocaust memorial authority, picked "Voices of the Survivors" as the theme of this year's commemoration.
"The voice of the survivors is the link that binds the painful and tormented history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to the future, to hope and to rebirth," Yad Vashem said.
At the Israeli parliament yesterday, Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, other officials and survivors read names of loved ones who perished.
At Yad Vashem, officials and survivors laid wreaths at the monument to the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, the largest insurgency during the Holocaust, ultimately crushed by the Germans.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center yesterday praised Germany for bringing accused Nazi war criminals John Demanjuk and Heinrich Boere to trial over the past year, but said a "lack of political will" continues to be the major obstacle to punishing others.
Efraim Zuroff, who coordinates the center's research on Nazi war criminals, said at least 77 Nazi war criminals have been convicted since 2001 and hundreds of new investigations have been initiated. The statistics, Zuroff said, defies assumption that it is too late to bring Nazi murderers to justice.
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