Israel honored the memory of the millions of Jews killed during the Holocaust by observing a two-minute silence throughout the state on Thursday.
The Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah in Hebrew, is celebrated annually. The observance started the night of April 7 and ends the evening of the next day.
To mark the occasion, Israeli leaders held a ceremony at Yad Vashem Wednesday. Franklin Graham, in a Facebook post, described how the Jewish people honored the memory of those who have died, and remembered the atrocious acts committed by the Nazis against them:
"At 10 am in Israel, things came to a standstill. Sirens sounded, pedestrians stopped walking, drivers pulled to the side of busy highways and stepped out of their cars. For two minutes, Israelis paused to honor those who lost their lives in the Holocaust today on the country's Holocaust Remembrance Day."
Graham added that despite the current pandemic, "the world must never forget what happened in that horrific genocide" that killed six million Jews without mercy.
On that day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also addressed the issue on Iran's nuclear deal during the event, Faithwire reported.
"History has taught us that deals like this, with extremist regimes like this, are worth nothing. An agreement with Iran that will pave the way for nuclear weapons - weapons that threaten us with destruction - we will not be obligated to such an agreement in any way. We have only one obligation: to prevent anyone who seeks to destroy us from carrying out his plot," he said.
Iran and the United States reportedly resumed the discussion over the 2015 nuclear deal through indirect talks in Vienna on April 6. Five other countries joined the meeting, including Russia, Germany, China, France and Britain.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was an agreement that seeks to restrict Iran on its nuclear program, sealed under Obama in July 2015. Calling it "the worst deal ever," Trump pulled the U.S. out from the accord in 2018, launching a "maximum-pressure campaign" by restoring and imposing additional sanctions on the Islamic government.
Considering Iran as an enemy, Israel is concerned that its nuclear weapon "would pose a grave threat" to the state.
The prime minister also criticized the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its investigation over war crime allegations on Israel and Palestinian terror groups, calling it "absurd" and anti-semitic.
"During the Holocaust. We had no rights, no country, no protector. Today we have a country, we have protection and we have the natural and complete right, as the sovereign country of the Jewish people, to defend ourselves from our enemies," Netanyahu further argued.
Last month, the ICC opened its formal investigation over the actions committed by Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2014.
The probe is expected to focus on three areas, including the Israeli settlement policy, the war between Israel and Hamas in 2014 and the 2018 Great March of Return protests.
President Reuven Rivlin also delivered a message, addressing the Holocaust survivors.
"My dear Holocaust survivors, Israeli citizens, the burden of memory that we carry in our hearts is a sacred duty. Whether we want it or not, the memory of the Holocaust shapes our identity as a people. The Holocaust places before us - its victims, the Jewish people and the State of Israel - an infinite task of remembrance," Rivlin stated.
The Holocaust was the murder of 6 million Jews, comprising two thirds of Europe's Jewish population, by the Nazi regime, from 1933 to 1945. The mass killing started in 1941, when 1.3 million Jews in Eastern Europe were executed with "mobile killing units". Deemed inefficient, the Nazis created the gas chambers. Nazi Germany was then ruled by the anti-semitic Adolf Hitler.
Extermination of the Jews was made into an official government policy during the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, calling it the "Final Solution". To execute the plan, the Nazis created six death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, Chelmo, Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka and Sobibor. 2.5 million Jews from all over Europe were murdered in the gas chambers.
The camps were only liberated when the Allied Forces advanced into the occupied territories between July 1944 and May 1945.
There are about 180,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel today. 900 of them have reportedly died due to COVID last year.
To commemorate the six million Jews who perished, six survivors lit six symbolic torches during the ceremony on Wednesday night.
