My grandparents, along with other Slovak Jews, were placed in crowded cattle cars, ultimately destined for Auschwitz. My grandmother was three months pregnant, but thankfully not obviously so. My grandfather refused. On the fateful night of September 28, 1944, two days after my grandfather’s 30th birthday, Slovak guards pounded on their door and seized them in the night. At this point in the war, the hunt for Jews in Slovakia was on in earnest and she and my grandfather were encouraged to go into hiding. After miscarrying three times, she became pregnant again in July 1944, and this time the pregnancy stuck. However, as luck would have it, my grandmother became pregnant anyway. Meanwhile, even though it seemed an inopportune time to start a family, my grandmother really wanted to have children. But she and my grandfather agreed that this was not a time to raise a family and ultimately decided to wait. The Slovaks wanted them off their hands for good, enough to pay a hefty price for it. Paying this fee guaranteed that no matter what happened to these Jews, whether they lived or died, they would never be sent back to Slovakia. You may not know this, but the Slovak government actually paid the Germans 500 Reichmarks per Jew, which is approximately the equivalent of $5,000 today. They were murdered along with thousands of others. She tried to keep her sister from getting on the train, a bold act that landed her in jail overnight. A few months later they came for older Jews, and my grandmother’s parents were also forced onto a train. My grandmother’s older sister was among those women, and my grandmother even witnessed it happen. The first of the deportations was for young women who were not yet married. She was a linguist and language teacher, and he was a journalist. They fell madly in love and married six months later. They were both living in Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. On Thursday morning, Rivlin and Israel's top security establishment, including heads of the army, police, Mossad intelligence agency and Shin Bet security service, will travel to Poland to lead the annual "March of Living" from the gates of the concentration camp of Auschwitz to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.My grandmother met her husband, my grandfather, in January of 1941 at a mutual friend’s wedding. TV and radio stations only broadcast Holocaust-related contents, such as documentaries, interviews with survivors and melancholic songs. "We, the Jews, were butchered during the Holocaust, a holocaust which was aimed to wipe off the Jewish people from the face of the earth," Rivlin said in his address.ĭuring the Holocaust Remembrance Day, places of entertainment including cafes and cinemas are closed, and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country. The ceremony featured also a traditional memorial service, including the recitation of a chapter from Psalms and the "Kaddish," a Jewish mourner's prayer by Israel's chief rabbis, Israel Rabbi David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef. The ceremony, attended by President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, began with the national flag lowered at half-mast.ĭuring the ceremony, which was broadcast live on all major TV channels, Holocaust survivors lighted six torches to mark the 6 million Jewish victims who were killed during the Holocaust. The "Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day," as it is officially called here, started with the annual ceremony at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. JERUSALEM, April 11 (Xinhua) - Israel marked its annual day of Holocaust remembrance on Wednesday evening with an official ceremony held in Jerusalem.įrom Wednesday evening to Thursday, the country will officially commemorate the genocide of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during the World War II. Israel marked its annual day of Holocaust remembrance on Wednesday evening with an official ceremony held in Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at an official ceremony marking the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, on April 11, 2018.
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