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Nazi Holocaust victims remembered
May 4, 1997
Web posted at: 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT)(CNN) -- Holocaust survivors and the loved ones of those who perished in Nazi concentration camps reflected on the unparalleled killing of World War II on Sunday as Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, began at sundown around the world.
In Minsk, Belarus, hundreds gathered at the site of a ghetto district where 100,000 Jews died in a Nazi purge. Throughout Israel, flags were at half-mast at the start of the 24-hour memorial, and Israeli television showed footage from Nazi death camps where Jews were systematically exterminated.
In southern Poland, some 2,500 young Jews, mostly from Israel, Canada and the U.S., marked the day by staging a March of the Living from the site of the former Auschwitz concentration camp to nearby Birkenau, where most of the complex's 1.5 million victims were killed.
On the east steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, the B'nai B'rith National Capital Association sponsored the "Unto Every Person There is a Name" ceremony. Organizers said the goal is to read the names of each of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.
And in Germany, Berliners read aloud the names of the nearly 56,000 Berlin Jews murdered under the Nazis -- a list that is so long it takes 26 hours to read out.
In addition to the Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis, more than 3 million Soviet prisoners of war and 2 million Poles and others Slavs were killed.
Related story:
- Insurers sued for denying payment to Holocaust victims - Mar. 31, 1997
Related sites:
- Cybrary of the Holocaust
- comprehensive site about the Holocaust
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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