Boelter pleads guilty in lawmaker attacks, agrees to two life sentences

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Israel used the solemn occasion of Monday's
annual Holocaust memorial day to call on the world to prevent Iran
from developing nuclear weapons and to draw new attention to the
plight of the dwindling number of survivors.


      The wail of air raid sirens pierced the air for two minutes as
the country came to a standstill in a yearly ritual remembering the
6 million Jews who perished in World War II. People stood at
attention and traffic halted during the moment of silence, as radio
stations played mournful music throughout the day.


      Israel was built on the ashes of the Holocaust, and preserving
the memory of the Nazi genocide plays a central role in the
country's identity.

      At the memorial's opening ceremony late Sunday, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu tried to draw parallels to the rise of Nazi
Germany and the development of Iran's nuclear program.


      Israel, like the West, believes Iran is developing nuclear
weapons, and Netanyahu derided the world's response to curbing
Tehran's atomic ambitions as limp.

      "If we have learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that we
must not be silent or be deterred in the face of evil," Netanyahu
said.


      Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran an existential threat,
underscored by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated
references to the Jewish state's destruction and Tehran's support
for anti-Israeli militant groups. Israel has hinted at taking
military action against Iran if diplomacy fails.

      This year's commemoration coincides with a summit in Washington
aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. Netanyahu hoped to
highlight the threat from Iran there, but officials said he called
off his trip after learning that Israel would be targeted because
of its own barely concealed nuclear weapons program.


      The Yad Vashem memorial authority picked "Voices of the
Survivors" as the theme of this year's commemoration. Sixty-five
years after World War II, about 207,000 aging survivors, many of
them destitute and alone, live in Israel, down 63,000 from just two
years earlier.


      In Jerusalem, Yad Vashem opened a new art exhibit on Monday
displaying works by survivors.

      Among the collection was a painting by Shoshana Noyman, 78, who
lost her father and sister during a six-week death march in
Ukraine. The painting shows a bearded man, eyes closed with
exhaustion, carrying a young girl on his shoulders. She said her
father dropped dead of exhaustion at the end of the march, while
her sister died from typhus.

      "I have no pictures of my family. I drew this from memory. This
is how I remember them," said Noyman, who was forced to stand
guard by her sister's body for more than a week before it could be
removed.


      At the Israeli parliament on Monday, Netanyahu, President Shimon
Peres, other officials and survivors read names of loved ones who
perished.


      Peres recited the names of his family members killed "with
2,060 of their community members in the town of Vishneva in August
1942," saying the "Nazis and their accomplices assembled the
town's residents in the synagogue that was made of wood and cruelly
shot and burned them to death."

      The reading is an annual rite known as "Every Person Has a
Name" that tries to break down the 6 million number into stories
of individuals, families and communities wiped out during the war.
Memorial ceremonies were also held at schools and military bases,
while restaurants, cafes and theaters were closed.


      The front page of the Yediot Ahronot daily carried a
black-and-white photo of a bearded Polish Jew, wrapped in a prayer
shawl, kneeling before two Nazi soldiers, his arms raised, fists
clenched, before he was executed.


      The man was the maternal grandfather of Meir Dagan, chief of the
Mossad spy agency, who told the newspaper: "I see that photo every
day and vow that something like that will not happen again."


      The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Monday praised Germany for
bringing accused Nazi war criminals John Demanjuk and Heinrich
Boere to trial over the past year, but said a "lack of political
will" continues to be the major obstacle to punishing others,
particularly in post-Communist Eastern Europe.


      The center singled out Hungary's failure to try Sandor Kepiro,
whom it accuses of organizing the mass murder of at least 1,200
civilians in Serbia in 1942.

Gallery

Minn. veteran recalls his role in revealing Holocaust to the world

Israel used the solemn occasion of Monday's
annual Holocaust memorial day to call on the world to prevent Iran
from developing nuclear weapons and to draw new attention to the
plight of the dwindling number of survivors.


On Holocaust memorial day, Israel warns of Iranian threat

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox