(April 18, 2007) – Around the world thousands of survivors and sympathizers of one of the worst human tragedies in history took time out on Holocaust Remembrance Day this week to remember the millions of Jews slaughtered during Hitler’s reign.

 

In Europe, an international crowd of 8,000 people participated on Monday, April 15, in Poland’s annual “March of the Living”—a  two-mile walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the death camp where nearly 1 million Jews were gassed before Russian troops liberated the camp in January 1945, the Associated Press (AP)  reported.

 

The march began with the blowing of a shofar (ram’s horn) and progressed along railroad tracks that once brought Jews from across Europe to their deaths.

On the same day, loud sirens sounded at 10 a.m. all across Israel, stopping pedestrians and automobiles in their tracks in order to observe a two-minute moment of silence for the estimated 6 million Jews massacred by Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II, the AP reported. 

 

Meanwhile, youth from Germany, where it is a crime to deny the Holocaust, joined with Israelis in Jerusalem to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day. The AP reported the youth as members of Ot Hakapara—Hebrew for “Sign of Atonement”—an organization founded in 1958 by German Protestants who believed their church had not done enough to stop the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust. 

 

In Italy, which has historically struggled to disassociate from its World War II alliance with Nazi Germany, Monsignor Antonio Franco, the Vatican’s ambassador to Israel, decided last minute to attend the official ceremonies in Jerusalem. Previously the Vatican considered boycotting the event after a photo caption at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum mentioned Pope Pius XII’s silence during World War II, the Jerusalem Post reported.

 

In Canada, a dismal afternoon of rain marked the annual Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was first observed in 2004. “Let us plainly state the awful, incontrovertible truth that brings us here today,” declared Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “Millions, including 6 million Jewish men, women and children,  were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.”

 

The prime minister said that when politicians stand up and “remember and mourn” the millions killed during the Holocaust it’s simply not good enough. “They must stand up to those who advocate the destruction of Israel and its people today,” he said in a clear reference to the Iranian president, who recently called the Holocaust a “myth” and repeatedly advocates for the destruction of Israel. 

 

Despite the Iranian leader’s anti-Semitic rhetoric though, thousands living in Iran have recently turned to an Israeli Web site to investigate the truth about the Holocaust for themselves, reported Agence France Presse. In January Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, launched a new Web site in Farsi that has since drawn more than 25,000 visits, roughly half of those from Internet surfers in Iran.