BICOM

Israel today remembers the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust (known in Israel as the Shoah) on the annual Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day

At 08:00 (10am Israeli time) a siren sounded in Israel for two minutes and people stood in silence. Remembrance services will take place at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, and other locations across the country.

Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the official state ceremony last night at Yad Vashem, where six survivors of the Holocaust, as well as Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev, lit torches in memory of the victims.

President Rivlin spoke of two distinct approaches to the memory of the Holocaust. Firstly, the universal approach, that views the Holocaust as “just one specific occurrence of genocide” that targeted the Jewish people. He said this approach “downplays the Shoah. It distorts history. It denies the programme of systematic extermination that was aimed specifically at the Jewish people. It denies antisemitism, a malignant disease that is two thousand years old.”

The second approach emphasises the prevention of another Holocaust as part of Israel’s raison d’etre. Rivlin said both approaches were dangerous and offered a third approach, in which the Jewish people survived the Holocaust and witnessed its own rebirth as a nation.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said: “The lesson for Israel is that we have to be able to defend ourselves, by ourselves, against any threat, against any enemy.”

Last night Zikaron Basalon (memories in the living room) meetings were held in 15,000 homes across Israel. The event involves Holocaust survivors telling their stories to small audiences in private homes.

IDF Chief of Staff, Gadi Eisenkott, yesterday visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, along with hundreds of representatives of the IDF.