Israel came to a complete standstill at 10 a.m. on Thursday, as a two-minute siren rang out across the country for Holocaust Remembrance Day in honor of the 6 million Jewish victims of Nazi persecution.
Each year on this day, traffic on roads and highways throughout Israel grinds to a halt and pedestrians stop in place to bow their heads in silence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials observed the somber moment of remembrance at a wreath-laying ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.
At 11 a.m., Knesset members were scheduled to convene for the traditional "Unto Every Person There is a Name" ceremony, in which the names of Holocaust victims are read aloud.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people from around the world will participate in the March of the Living, an annual procession around the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland. This will be followed by an official ceremony commemorating the victims of the Birkenau camp – one of the 40 subcamps in the Auschwitz complex where Jews were murdered en masse in gas chambers.
This article was originally published by i24NEWS. Read more at https://www.i24news.tv/en.
