Israelis from all walks of life, in their homes, cars, businesses, and on the street, stopped and stood silently for two minutes this morning in honor of the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis in the Holocaust 60 years ago. Today was Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). At Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, the \"Every Person Has a Name\" ceremony was held today, in the course of which the names of Holocaust victims were read aloud. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer read the names of Moroccan Jews who were transported to Poland and murdered there.
Prime Minister Sharon said at the central ceremony last night that Israel is the only place in the world where Jews have the right and privilege of defending themselves on their own. Six survivors who established their lives anew in the State of Israel lit torches at the ceremony. One of them was 67-year-old Dina Levine Baitler, born in Vilna, Lithuania. When she was six, her father was deported to Siberia by the occupying Russian forces. The next year, in 1941, the Germans captured Vilna, and soon after took many of the Jews to an open pit and opened fire. Dina, slightly wounded by a shot in her leg, fell into a pit among the corpses. \"At night,\" she described to Yad Vashem\'s quarterly magazine, \"I heard a voice of a woman asking in Yiddish if anyone else was alive. There were wounded people who called out for help. The guards… heard them, came back, and started to shoot again.\" Towards morning, Dina pulled herself out of the pit and headed towards the forest. She wandered through the forests and villages for the rest of the war begging for food and shelter; a woman helped her assume the false identity of a Polish orphan. After the war, she returned to Vilna and was placed in a Jewish orphanage. She immigrated to Israel with her husband in 1960, and today has two children, ten grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
Another torch-lighter, Mordechai Wiesel, 86, was one of 21 children in his family; only he and two others survived the Holocaust. He was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in May 1945.
Video films on the Holocaust and related topics are being screened throughout the day at the Holocaust Studies Institute in Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak. At a memorial ceremony there last night, former Supreme Court Justice Moshe Beisky attacked the Pope and the Western countries for their silence in the face of the monstrous events of the Holocaust, but said that we will never forget the \"brave Righteous Gentiles who saved what they could.\" Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies will end this evening.
Prime Minister Sharon said at the central ceremony last night that Israel is the only place in the world where Jews have the right and privilege of defending themselves on their own. Six survivors who established their lives anew in the State of Israel lit torches at the ceremony. One of them was 67-year-old Dina Levine Baitler, born in Vilna, Lithuania. When she was six, her father was deported to Siberia by the occupying Russian forces. The next year, in 1941, the Germans captured Vilna, and soon after took many of the Jews to an open pit and opened fire. Dina, slightly wounded by a shot in her leg, fell into a pit among the corpses. \"At night,\" she described to Yad Vashem\'s quarterly magazine, \"I heard a voice of a woman asking in Yiddish if anyone else was alive. There were wounded people who called out for help. The guards… heard them, came back, and started to shoot again.\" Towards morning, Dina pulled herself out of the pit and headed towards the forest. She wandered through the forests and villages for the rest of the war begging for food and shelter; a woman helped her assume the false identity of a Polish orphan. After the war, she returned to Vilna and was placed in a Jewish orphanage. She immigrated to Israel with her husband in 1960, and today has two children, ten grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
Another torch-lighter, Mordechai Wiesel, 86, was one of 21 children in his family; only he and two others survived the Holocaust. He was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in May 1945.
Video films on the Holocaust and related topics are being screened throughout the day at the Holocaust Studies Institute in Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak. At a memorial ceremony there last night, former Supreme Court Justice Moshe Beisky attacked the Pope and the Western countries for their silence in the face of the monstrous events of the Holocaust, but said that we will never forget the \"brave Righteous Gentiles who saved what they could.\" Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies will end this evening.