A crowd gathers for a Holocaust remembrance service at the Jewish Community Center in Wilkes-Barre Wednesday evening. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is attending the main ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
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The stark silence siren was to be followed by ceremonies at schools memorials and elsewhere in honor of those who lost their lives as well as Shoah survivors. “Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel lives”.
A number of the survivors cried during a funeral prayer sung by European Jews to commemorate the Holocaust, AFP reported.
The Israeli President added that “the memory of the Holocaust for future generations, should meet three basic principles”. When the remaining Holocaust survivors are gone, I pray that we will be able to face ourselves in the mirror knowing we did what we could, while we still could, to help Holocaust survivors in their final days.
“We find it today in the voices that can be heard in the heart of a different Europe – from the British left and the extreme right in Eastern Europe and in Europe as a whole, and in areas across of the Arab world”.
“The State of Israel will deal with this anti-Semitism by ensuring, first and foremost, a national home and a Jewish army that protects the nation of survival”, Rivlin said.
Moshe, who immigrated to Israel after the war, was never given a Bar Mitzvah in Poland, explaining that “the economic situation was so hard for us that we didn’t even think about doing the Bar Mitzvah”.
Rivlin concluded his address on a deeply moving note, stressing the paramount importance of Jewish unity.
Such a tepid reframing of hate and hate mongering does not weaken the hate, only our response to it. This is why it is so crucially important for us to name anti-Semitism when we see it and to remember the Holocaust for what it was. We will forever pursue the blood of our brothers and sisters, which screams at us from within the earth. You will never be forgotten as long as we shall live.
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All the dignitaries and the people present at the event paid tribute to people from the past.
