Sirens sound across Israel as country remembers Holocaust

May 2, 2011, 7:45 GMT

Tel Aviv - Sirens wailed across Israel for two minutes Monday morning as Israelis stood in solemn silence to remember the victims of the Nazi World War II genocide.

As the sirens sounded at 10 am (0700 GMT), traffic came to a total standstill. Drivers stood next to their cars and pedestrians stopped walking, many of them standing to attention or with their heads bowed.

An official state memorial ceremony for the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their European collaborators began at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre in Jerusalem, immediately after the sirens.

This was followed by the 'For every Person there is a name' ceremony at parliament, in which the names of Holocaust victims were read aloud. President Shimon Peres, Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the ceremony, each recounting the final moments of their relatives who perished.

According to Yad Vashem, around two-thrids of the six million Jewish victims have bene identified, but the centre's chief archivist admitted last year that all the viCtims are unlikely to be identified by name.

A non-profit organization which assists Holocaust survivors said Sunday that approximately 208,000 are still alive in Israel.

Half of them are over 80-years-old, and every day about 35 die, said the Tel Aviv-based Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel.

Some 74,000 are direct survivors of the extermination and concentration camps and ghettos, while the remaining 134,000 are Holocaust refugees, who survived the war by fleeing the Nazi horrors or by going into hiding.

While in the early years after Israel's foundation in 1948, Holocaust survivors made up about half the country's Jewish population, they today form under 4 per cent.

Holocaust Memorial Day began Sunday night with a ceremony at Yad Vashem, attended by state leaders, foreign diplomats, and Holocaust survivors and their relatives.

Six survivors lit six beacons honouring the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The memorial day ends at Monday at sunset.

The United Nations has designated January 27, the day the Auschwitz death camp was liberated in 1945, as international Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But Israel has traditionally marked it on the 27th day of the Jewish month of Nissan - one week before Israeli Independence Day - to symbolize the birth of the Jewish state from the ashes of the Holocaust.

According to counts after the war, two thirds of Europe's 9 million Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.

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