Dignitaries read names of Holocaust victims at Knesset

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu, Peres, Rivlin, read names of those killed by the Nazis; chief rabbis, IDF cantor open the ceremony; Rivlin: Everyone has a name but some of those names will never be known.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
candle flame 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
candle flame 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The Knesset held a ceremony called "every person has a name" Thursday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, attended by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and a host of other dignitaries and ministers.

Rivlin, speaking first among the politicians in attendance, read names of children from Shklov, Belarus, who were killed in the Holocaust."The city of Shklov, which was the hometown of my forefathers and was home to Jews since the 16th century," Rivlin said at the ceremony. "Even after my ancestors made their way to the Land of Israel, Jewish history in Shklov did not end. On Yom Kippur of 1941, the Jews of Shklov were led to their slaughter by the cursed Nazis and their collaborators."In the ceremony called, "every person has a name," Rivlin explained that not all of those names are known by the world, "like the name of the baby born to Aharon and Eugenia Kapishitzi in 1941, which will never be known. His aunt wrote in her testimony at Yad Vashem: 'His first name is not known because he was a baby.'" The Knesset speaker continued by reading out the names of several children from Shklov.Also in attendance were Chief Rabbis of Israel Shlomo Amar and Yonah Metzger, Foreign Minsiter Avigdor Liberman, and Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein. Chief IDF Cantor Shai Abramson sang "El Mahel Rachamim."