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Commemoration in the Israeli city of Ashkelon
Photo: AMIR COHEN / REUTERS
Israel has commemorated the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
In the morning, the sirens wailed nationwide for two minutes.
Cars stopped in the streets, people paused in silent memory.
Numerous commemorative events then began in the country.
According to official information, there are still 174,500 survivors living in Israel.
83 percent of them are older than 80 years, 18 percent over 90. More than 900 Holocaust survivors in Israel are over 100 years old.
The average age is 84.5 years, as the competent authority announced before the day of remembrance.
President Reuven Rivlin said at a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Wednesday evening that 900 Holocaust survivors in Israel had died "as a direct result" of the corona pandemic.
"They survived the ghettos and death camps, the immigration ships and the internment camps," Rivlin said.
However, they had fought the last fight of their lives "disturbed and isolated, behind masks and protective gloves, longing for contact, but separated from their loved ones."
"This evening our hearts are with them and their families."
The victim was also commemorated in Lithuania
Because of the ongoing corona crisis, the "March of the Living", during which young Jews from all over the world go from Auschwitz to Birkenau, should take place virtually.
An online memorial event and a 3-D march were scheduled for Thursday afternoon.
Auschwitz was the largest of the German extermination camps during the Nazi era.
Young Germans who volunteer in the Israeli Disability Aid Adi took part in a memorial event with Holocaust survivors in the Negev desert in the south of the country on Wednesday.
The victims of the Holocaust were also commemorated in Lithuania.
“We must constantly educate and educate our society, especially the younger generation.
We shouldn't be afraid to speak courageously and openly about our painful history, ”said Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
During the German occupation between 1941 and 1944, the National Socialists and local helpers murdered more than 90 percent of the 200,000 Jews living in Lithuania at the time.
asa / dpa
