Knesset Speaker: Some names will never be known
In Holocaust ceremony, president and party leaders read out victims’ names of particular personal significance
Aaron Kalman is a former writer and breaking news editor for the Times of Israel
“Every man has a name, but some names will forever go unknown,” Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said during the Knesset’s official Holocaust Rememberance Day ceremony Thursday.
Rivlin read the names of those killed by the Nazis in the village of Shklou, in Belarus. The town had a Jewish community since the 16th century, he said. That history ended the night after Yom Kippur 1941, when the Jews were taken from the ghetto and murdered by the Nazis.
President Shimon Peres read the names of people from his town, and mentioned his grandparents and their families who were killed.
“Those who remained were brutally murdered,” Peres said as he described the entire town being rounded up into the wooden synagogue. “The doors were locked and they were burned alive,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu read a poem written by his late father-in-law, Shmuel Ben-Artzi. In the poem, Ben-Artzi described the town where he was born and where many of his family members were killed.
Opposition leader Shaul Mofaz read the names of Iraqi Jews who were killed, and Transport Minister Yisrael Katz mentioned those who were murdered in Libya during the war.
Shelly Yachimovich, leader of the Labor Party, read the names of her family members who were killed by the Nazis. Other Knesset members and Supreme Court justices also read the names of victims.
