Israel pauses in tribute to Holocaust victims

Life came to a standstill throughout Israel for two minutes at 10:00 a.m. (07:00 GMT) Thursday to the sound of sirens, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day in memory of the six million Jewish victims of Nazism during World War II.

In Jerusalem, people stepped out of stores or stood on their balconies, and traffic came to a halt in streets adorned with Israeli flags, with drivers exiting their cars for this collective moment of remembrance that takes place annually. All radio and television channels have been broadcasting testimonies, documentaries, and films about the genocide since the day before.

The commemoration began Wednesday evening with a ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial, attended by a handful of Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution from 1933 to 1945. The tribute was held as the war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, entered its 19th month in the Gaza Strip. "Anyone who feared that after the massacre of October 7 we would face another Holocaust can see how we have turned the situation around," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech Wednesday evening at the museum-memorial esplanade. "On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I promise: military pressure on Hamas will continue. We will destroy all its capabilities, bring back all our hostages, defeat Hamas, and prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," he asserted.

Holocaust survivors lit six torches during this ceremony, in memory of the six million Jews massacred by the Nazis. Later in the day, Israeli President Isaac Herzog is expected to participate in Poland in the annual March of the Living, a Holocaust remembrance march, at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the southwest of the country.

According to the Authority for Holocaust Survivors' Rights, 120,507 survivors of these persecutions are still living in Israel today, a number down nearly 10% since April 2024.