Jewish and Israeli Holidays
It is co-sponsored by 42 other senators, most of them Republican.
March of the Living founder: ‘The only thing worse than Auschwitz is the world forgetting Auschwitz’
The ceremony included the lighting of six torches, each one honoring a different group of Holocaust heroes.
“There is no administration, no president, no secretary of state that have committed themselves to this extent to fight anti-Semitism, to protect the Jewish people and to support the State of Israel,” said Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Elan Carr.
“From this place, I call on world leaders to fight rampant anti-Semitism erupting around the world, especially the shocking and dramatic rise of hate crimes in Europe, Latin America [and] the United States,” said Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The delegation, which includes envoys from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe, did the nearly two-mile walk from the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz to Birkenau on as a tribute to all victims of the Holocaust and a call for an end to anti-Semitism.
The ceremony, established 20 years ago by then-Knesset speaker, Holocaust survivor and partisan fighter Dov Shilansky, was named for a poem by the famed Israeli called Zelda.
Speaking at Yad Vashem, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says the Jewish people “will not present its neck for the slaughter in the face of threats of destruction.”
“We know the tragic history of Israel, we thought that is not God wants. We came here to bless the Jewish people to show our true love for Israel,” said a member of the Korean delegation.
Famous Jewish illustrators have included the late Stan Lee, Ezra Jack Keats and Rube Goldberg; currently, they include Roz Chast, Maira Kalman and Liana Finck.
“Last Letters From the Holocaust: 1944,” an online exhibit from Yad Vashem, has arrived on its website just in time for Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), which this year corresponds to May 2.
He was known for reciting the Shema prayer in public at ceremonies honoring Holocaust victims—a practice he vowed to take upon himself after screaming it while SS guards rounded him and others up. He vowed to recite the prayer with living Jews if God would spare his life.
“A Different Pesach Program” was in its 16th year and offered participants the opportunity to rent villas in a resort, offering “a five-star hotel program without the hotel,” as stated on its website.
