Israel marks annual Holocaust Remembrance Day

DEBKAfile was founded by a team of journalists in June 2000 as an independent Internet Web site, providing an intelligence and security news service. April 23, 2017, 12:46 PM (IDT)

National events marking the annual Holocaust Martyrs ‘and Heroes’ Remembrance Day begins Sunday evening with a state ceremony at the Warsaw Ghetto Square in the Yad Vashem compound, addressed by President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Along with other dignitaries, the event is to be attended by 2,500 Holocaust survivors, six of whom will light torches. Also present will be members of the diplomatic corps, IDF soldiers and youth leaders. The 75-minute ceremony, whose theme this year is “The Fate of the Individual,” is broadcast live on all television and radio channels and will be accessible for the first time on Facebook and the Yad Vashem YouTube Channel.

Monday at 10 a.m., Israel will pause for two minutes silence, while, in Poland, the traditional March of Life takes place at the Auschwitz camp led by the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkott. The commemoration events end later that evening with a ceremony at Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot, which was founded in western Galilee in 1949 by heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and fellow-survivors of the Holocaust. 

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