Tales of survivors, Iran dominate Israeli commemoration of Jews who perished in Holocaust

Survivors’ tales, Iran dominate Holocaust day

JERUSALEM — Melancholy music floated over the airwaves and tales of the fast-dwindling number of Holocaust survivors dominated the media on Monday as Israel held its annual remembrance of the 6 million Jews who perished during the Nazi Holocaust.

Looming over the memorial day was the Israeli fear that the world would wake up too late to eliminate the threat of Iran’s nuclear program as it woke up too late to eliminate the threat of Adolf Hitler.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s state Holocaust memorial authority, picked “Voices of the Survivors” as the theme of this year’s commemoration, which began Sunday night with a state ceremony and continues through Monday evening. About 220,000 aging survivors, many of them destitute and alone, live in Israel, down 50,000 from just two years earlier.

“The voice of the survivors is the link that binds the painful and tormented history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to the future, to hope and to rebirth,” Yad Vashem said on its Web site.

On Monday, in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, people will read the names of victims of the Holocaust. The project, called “Every Person Has a Name,” is meant to break down the number of 6 million into stories of individuals, families and communities wiped out during the war.

At midmorning, air raid sirens will pierce the air, marking two minutes of silence in memory of the victims.

The annual remembrance is one of the most solemn on Israel’s calendar. Restaurants, cafes and places of entertainment shut down, and radio and TV programming is dedicated almost exclusively to documentaries about the Holocaust, interviews with survivors, discussions about the significance of the genocide and lessons for the future.

At the opening ceremony on Sunday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained bitterly about the world’s reaction to Iran’s nuclear program. Like the West, Israel is convinced Iran is trying to build atomic weapons.

“We encounter in the best case a limp reaction, and even that is fading,” Netanyahu said at Yad Vashem, before hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families, Israeli leaders, diplomats and others.

“If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that we must not be silent or be deterred in the face of evil,” he added.

Rattling Israel further are Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated references to the Jewish state’s destruction.

A study released hours before the opening ceremony found that anti-Semitic incidents doubled worldwide last year compared with 2008, with researchers counting 1,129 incidents of physical violence. The Tel Aviv University report concluded that Muslim groups and radical leftists used Israel’s bruising 22-day invasion of the Gaza Strip last year, meant to stop rocket attacks on neighboring Israeli communities, to promote their campaign of anti-Semitism.

The number of incidents was the highest in two decades of studies.