On Holocaust Remembrance Day, weekly hostage rally draws link between the Nazi genocide and October 7

Thousands attend the weekly rally in Tel Aviv for the release of hostages in Gaza, which this week fell on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.

The rally occurred separately from an anti-government protest taking place elsewhere in Tel Aviv.

The rally, the 16th consecutive event on Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostages Square since October 7, kicked off with a prayer for the safety and well-being of Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.

The rally follows the death of 24 troops in Gaza in a single day in the collapse of two buildings and the crowd is invited to observe a minute of silence in their memory and all other Israeli victims of the war that broke out on October 7.

Sivan Cohen Saban, the host of the event and a co-founder of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, which organizes the weekly rallies, reads out a letter by Major Eli Levy, a 24-year-old commander of a company in the 202nd battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, who was among the fatalities in Gaza. “We won’t be back until all hostages return even if takes us two years,” she quotes a letter the Levy left behind.

Cohen Saban notes the well-known phrase “never again” in connection with the Holocaust. She says that for Israelis after October 7, “never again is now.” She introduces a filmed message by Iga Sofiaja Bonkiene, whose family rescued Jews in Lithuania from the Holocaust.

“I really would like to ask and appeal to the people of Gaza to help release the abducted, I know it’s hard against Hamas but just as we helped people against the Nazis you, too, can help and save the kidnapped with information or in any other way,” Bonkiene says.

Yosef Avi Yair Engel, the son of two Holocaust survivors and grandfather to released hostage Ofir Engel, lists what he sees as parallels between what happened to Holocaust victims and to the victims of the October 7 massacres.

“Then, as now, there was a nation determined to kill Jews,” he says. “Then, as now, the world stays silent,” he said, citing the legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague for genocide, an allegation that Israel and many of its allies reject.