Israelis Pay Tribute to Victims of Nazi Holocaust

Life in Israel came to a standstill Tuesday in somber tribute to the estimated 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

Precisely at 8 a.m., air raid sirens broke the morning stillness and blared steadily for two minutes across the country of some 4 million people. Traffic came to a halt, children suddenly stopped playing and pedestrians stood still--all to mark the annual Holocaust memorial day.

“There is nothing so moving as seeing everything around you stand still and knowing that it is happening at the same moment all over the country,” said Sheri Lerner, 26, a Jerusalem lawyer. “It makes me feel that with all our problems and internal divisions, the country is still united.”

Israeli President Chaim Herzog opened the observance known as Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day by lighting a torch Monday night at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum here.

“Israel must be the absolute denial of the theories of discrimination and racism, the loss of man’s dignity and the negation of man’s honor, which was exemplified by our enemy,” Herzog told mourners at Yad Vashem.

Anatoly Shcharansky, the Jewish dissident jailed for nine years in Soviet prisons until his release in February, visited Yad Vashem and called the day “an obligation of ours to remember, to understand how important it is that we are in the state of Israel.”

Each year on this day, Israelis stop whatever they are doing and stand silently in an emotional memorial to those who died in the Holocaust waged by Adolf Hitler as his “Final Solution” for exterminating Jews in World War II. When the sirens stop, normal daily activity resumes.

In addition, six torches are lighted at Yad Vashem--signifying the 6 million Jewish war dead--and sad folk songs fill the airwaves. The blue-and-white Israeli flag centered with the six-pointed Star of David flies at half-staff during the day.