Israel marks Holocaust memorial day with concern for survivors
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Israel marked Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day Monday with vocal concern for the plight of aging survivors, many of whom are living in poverty in Israel.
"We must never accept a reality in which even one of the Holocaust survivors in Israel is living without dignity," Acting President Dalia Itzik declared at the opening ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, referring to reports that a third of the Holocaust survivors living in Israel live below the poverty line.
Hundreds of people, many of them Holocaust survivors, sat in rows at the central plaza at Yad Vashem for the ceremony Sunday evening, bundled up against the cold weather. A youth choir sang, and Israeli leaders addressed the somber gathering.
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On Monday at 10 a.m., sirens will wail throughout Israel for two minutes with Israelis standing silently to remember the victims.
Itzik said at the beginning of the ceremony that Holocaust is not only a stain on the history of Germany, not only on the history of European peoples, but a mark of Cain on all of humanity."
Former MK Joseph (Tommy) Lapid, addressing the gathering of survivors, government leaders and foreign dignitaries, said that the world is yet again ignoring genocide - this time in Darfur.
Speaking on behalf of Holocaust survivors, Lapid said that while the Holocaust was a unique event in history, "even after the Holocaust we witnessed genocide in Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda, and we must cry out against the genocide currently being committed in Darfur in Sudan - and the world is sitting on its hands and send a few sacks of flour, not so much in order to feed the hungry, but rather to calm its conscience."
Lapid, who currently chairs the Yad Vashem council, added that "even today there is an existential threat to the Jewish people on the part of the Iranian president."
Regarding Iran's nuclear program, Lapid said "[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is planning to have means of destruction compared to which the gas chambers at Auschwitz were just the beginning."
"6 million who were murdered say to us, 'We thought it could not happen, we relied on the goodness of others, and when we awoke from our illusions it was too late,'" said Lapid.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in his address that "there are many, gathered in prestigious academic institutions, whose eyes are blinded and hearts are closed by hatred for Israel. They deny the right of the Jewish people to exist in a sovereign state. They are the first to find justification for any atrocious act against the residents of Israel and to vehemently condemn any defensive action taken by the State of Israel."
Olmert noted that Israel celebrates its 59th independence day next week. "The renewal of the Jewish people, its shaking off the ashes of the Holocaust for a new life and national rebirth in its historic birthplace, is the pinnacle of its victory," he said.
The central theme for this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day is bearing witness.
Thousands of young Jews honor Holocaust victims at Auschwitz Several thousand young Jews remembered Sunday the 6 million victims of the Holocaust at the former German concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Education Minister Yuli Tamir also attended ceremonies on International Holocaust Memorial Day.
The youths from Israel, Europe and North America said among others the Kaddish prayer for the dead.
Memorial ceremonies will continue on Monday with the "March of the Living." Around 6,000 young Israelis and Jews from all over the world will walk silently from Auschwitz to the three kilometer-distant Birkenau camp. Birkenau was the biggest Nazi death camp in which more than one million, predominantly Jewish prisoners, were murdered.
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