Friends

Friends, with the sunset in Israel begins mourning day - Yom ha-Shoah. This is the Memorial Day of the Holocaust and heroism of European Jewry. We honor the memory of the six million Jews who died because of brutal violent death, those who fought to the last for their lives and those who survived, in spite of everything.

The symbol of Jewish resistance was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Its defenders for 5 weeks have been making opposition to the military, who wanted to destroy the ghetto completely. The liquidation of the ghetto in Warsaw began on the 19th of April, 1943 (27 Nisan) and continued until May 16. Therefore, on the 27 Nisan was established Holocaust Memorial Day and heroism of European Jewry.

Of course, a thousand people - exhausted, hungry, almost unarmed - could not break through the barriers of the Nazis. But this uprising was a turning point in the minds of the Jews: they started to believe that even a small force, backed by faith, can do the impossible. That's when the Jews realized that they can and must defend themselves that they can rely only on themselves.

The third largest, after Warsaw and Lodz, was Lvov ghetto, Jews from there were destroyed in Yaniv concentration camp. The territory had not gas chambers, crematoria, official documents listed as camp labor. But the land in the "Valley of Death", where mass executions were carried out on a half meters was soaked with blood.

Every year in Yom ha-Shoah at the Warsaw ghetto memorial in Yad Vashem there is a rally. There are people who survived the Holocaust, their families, relatives. Together with the President and the Prime Minister they lit six torches in memory of the six million victims. The morning of the day starts with a siren, it is heard at ten o'clock. This means that Israel must freeze in two minutes of silence. After it passes wreath laying ceremony at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Also, since 1988, in Poland annually has been held "Pace of life." Its members go from the Auschwitz death camp to another camp - Birkenau. The name of this event is symbolic, it is - the opposition of "pace of death" during which part of weak prisoners - died. Young people should remember this.

Friends! These terrible memories are always with us. We have no moral right to forget, we have to pass our knowledge on disaster and pain to other generations so that they understand that such a tragedy cannot happen again EVER.