Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 23, 1990 TAG: 9004230038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Short
As the sirens sounded at 10 a.m., traffic ground to a halt, and thousands of Israelis stood silently at attention to honor the victims.
Hundreds of Israelis also marked Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day in ceremonies across the country at which the names of victims were read by relatives and friends.
According to recent statistics, there are 302,404 Holocaust survivors living in this nation of 4.7 million people, including Polish-born Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and other political and military leaders.
Leading the main name-reading ceremony outside the Knesset, or parliament, Shamir spoke of his father's slaying, then named other Nazi victims - his mother, and two sisters, their husbands and their children.
"My sister, Miriam, was married to Mordechai Shklarevitch. They and their children were killed by a forest guard who used to work for them, when they came to hide in his house," he said.
Shamir, according to aides, had never disclosed full details about how his family perished.
The name-reading program, called "Unto Every Person There Is A Name," was introduced last year as part of an effort to remind young people of the Jewish loss in the Holocaust. Many Jews believe its impact on the young is diminishing.
Parliament Speaker Dov Shilansky, a survivor of Germany's Dachau concentration camp who lost relatives to the Nazis, said the name-reading ceremony was also intended to send a message to the world.
by CNB