The annual “Every Person Has a Name” ceremony was held at the Knesset on Thursday, the Knesset members reading off the names of Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The ceremony, which was established 20 years ago by then-Knesset speaker, Holocaust survivor and partisan fighter Dov Shilansky, was named for a poem by the famed Israeli who called herself Zelda.
Afterwards, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu read a poem written by his father-in-law, Shmuel Ben Artzi, when he lost touch with his family members in Europe in 1941. All of them were murdered.
Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin read the names of relatives of his wife, Nechama.
Other MKs honored those victims who came from their countries of origin. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon read the names of children killed in Libyan concentration camps, and MKs Amir Peretz and Rafi Peretz read the names of Moroccan Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Those arriving at the Knesset were able to light memorial candles at a special table at the entrance to the building. The hundreds of candles were each labeled with the name of someone murdered in the Shoah.