The torchbearers for the official Yom HaShoah Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife on Tuesday in a moving meeting.
After the survivors briefly related their experiences in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Sara Netanyahu told the group they reminded her of her own uncles and aunts who didn't make it out of Europe. "My father survived, because he was here in Zion," she said. "He arrived in Israel before the war, and it was here that he learned that he had no one left." She noted that her father's sister was 10 years old when she was killed by the Nazi regime during World War II.
"Her father's entire family was destroyed," the Prime Minister added. "Your stories are stories of terrible tragedy and supreme heroism. You met with cold, suffering, and agony and overcame them," he stated.
Bella Eisenman, Shaul Lubovitch, Sarah Shapira, Menachem Haberman, Yehuda Maimon and Fanny Ben Ami will be honored with the lighting of the six torches at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Jerusalem on May 1st.
The date of Yom HaShoah was chosen to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a significant event of resistance against the Nazis who by the war's end had killed 6 million Jewish civilians and millions of other minorities in death camps.
Learn about the March of the Living.