Israel commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, beginning with a two-minute siren in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis.
The siren was followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.
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Among those attending the ceremony are President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Austian Chancellor Christian Kern, Vice President of the Supreme Court of Israel Judge Elyakim Rubinstein, chairman of the World Zionist Organization Avraham Duvdevani, chairman of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky, Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, acting dean of the Diplomatic Corps, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, representatives of survivor and fighter organizations and delegations from across the country.
The wreath-laying ceremony will be followed by a recitation of Holocaust victims’ names by members of the public. Concomitantly, the recitation of the names is set to take place at the Knesset under the auspices of Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein.
The day’s main memorial ceremony will take place at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance at 1pm.
Throughout the day, Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies will be running a variety of activities for educational groups from Israel and abroad, and holding a number of musical performances as part of the Music and Memory project in cooperation with the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
In Poland, the 29th March of Life will take place, beginning at 3:30pm local time (2:30pm Israel time), where more than ten thousand young people from around the world will walk three kilometers from the Auschwitz camp to Birkenau as a silent gesture to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices. The government will be represented by Minister of Education Naftali Bennett and also attending is Supreme Court President Miriam Naor and Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot.
At 7:45pm, the events of Holocaust Remembrance Day will be concluded in a ceremony at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot in the presence of President Rivlin. For the first time in the history of the country, a senior German offiical will attend the ceremony: former German President Joachim Gauck will be President Rivlin’s guest.
