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Israel commemorates 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims

Six Holocaust survivors will light a memorial candle for 1 million Jewish Holocaust victims each at Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Ceremony on Sunday evening. 

Top Israeli officials will mark Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) on Sunday evening with a memorial ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem at 8 PM.

Six Holocaust survivors: Moshe Ha-Elion, Moshe Jakubowitz, Jeannine Sebbane-Bouhanna, Moshe Porat, Max Privler, and Elka Abramovitz will each light a memorial torch, in memory of 1 million Holocaust victims respectively.

Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day is primarily scheduled around the date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis, which began some 13 days earlier in the Hebrew calendar. The commemoration is postponed due to the uprising’s launch on the eve of the Passover holiday, making a memorial on the exact day out of place.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed at his weekly Cabinet meeting that he would address Sunday evening’s ceremony at Yad Vashem.

“I will speak this evening at Yad Vashem about the great significance of the transition from the Holocaust to revival, from the people that were a driven leaf, helpless, to a sovereign people with a defensive force that is among the strongest in the world,” Netanyahu said. President Reuven Rivlin will also speak at the ceremony.

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At the Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also committed to making sure that the many Holocaust survivors in Israel live a “respectable existence.”

“On this issue I know that corrections and improvements can be made,” Netanyahu said, regarding support for Holocaust survivors.  “Therefore, I have decided to personally head a ministerial team that will include the ministers of Finance, Health, Social Welfare and Social Services, Construction and Housing, and Justice.”

“We will work together and quickly to ensure quality of life and a respectable existence for Holocaust survivors in their remaining years,” Netanyahu added. “We have no greater obligation than this.”

By: World Israel News Staff