JERUSALEM : A Nation Remembers
When the sirens wail throughout Israel on Wednesday morning , pedestrians will freeze in mid-step, cars will brake to a stop and factories will pause as the Jewish state stands silent for a minute of contemplation, memorial and unity.
It is Holocaust Day in Israel, the day designated to recall the destruction of a third of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis during the 1930s and ‘40s.
Holocaust Day in Israel is remarkably secular in its commemorations. Radio and television air mournful music punctuated by daylong first-person accounts from survivors. Movie theaters are closed for 24 hours from sundown tonight, an irony this year since “Schindler’s List,” the Oscar-winning account of the Holocaust, will be closed to the throngs that have flocked to see it since the film opened here last month.
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