In honor of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, President Isaac Herzog laid a wreath this morning at Yad Vashem and then participated in the “Unto Every Person There Is a Name” ceremony at the Knesset, where he read the names of relatives killed in the Holocaust.
This year’s ceremony was held with the central theme of “Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust: Marking 80 Years Since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” and six Holocaust survivors lit memorial candles.
During his address, Herzog lamented the fraying of social ties during the anti-judicial reform protests, calling for unity.
"The Sages understood the verse “this is the record of Adam’s line” (Genesis 5:1) to encapsulate the entire Torah. More broadly, “This is the record of Adam’s line. When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.” In the likeness of God, He made him. That is the whole Torah."
“'Unto every person, there is a name,'” wrote Zelda. The essence of this wonderful, sacred, and moving ceremony, just like the Book of Names, which we were recently privileged to dedicate at Yad Vashem, containing millions of names—is the reading of names, for in his likeness did God create every human being."
"We do not remember numbers, we remember lives, we remember people. The fact that the name of every Jew who perished in the flames is still called out loudly in Jerusalem eighty years later, in the Knesset of our Jewish and democratic nation, is a great victory."
"I would like to remind everyone here of the emotional words of Holocaust survivor Shoshana Weiss, who spoke last night at Yad Vashem and called on all of us to come together and unite to protect our people and homeland, because we have no other country. Let's listen to her."