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Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day -- marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Visit the Yad Vashem website and remember. Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, established in 1953. When Yad Vashem came into being, a core goal of its founding visionaries was to recognize gentiles who, at personal risk, and without a financial or evangelistic motive, chose to save their Jewish brethren from the ongoing genocide during the Holocaust. Those recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations are honored in a section of Yad Vashem known as the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations. After the Western Wall, Yad Vashem is the second most-visited Israeli tourist site. Its curators charge no fee for admission and welcome approximately one million visitors a year.

The Hall of Names is a memorial to the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The main hall is composed of two cones: one ten meters high, with a reciprocal well-like cone excavated into the underground rock, its base filled with water. On the upper cone is a display featuring 600 photographs of Holocaust victims and fragments of Pages of Testimony. These are reflected in the water at the bottom of the lower cone, commemorating those victims whose names remain unknown. Surrounding the platform is the circular repository, housing the approximately 2.2 million Pages of Testimony collected to date, with empty spaces for those yet to be submitted. Since the 1950s, Yad Vashem has collected approximately 110,000 audio, video and written testimonies by Holocaust survivors. (Read more about Yad Vashem on Wikipedia)


Take a moment to go to the “Resources Marking Liberation of Auschwitz” section on the Yad Vashem website -- http://www.yadvashem.org/27th/index.asp

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