Holocaust victims commemorated in Israel

JERUSALEM

Israel on Thursday commemorated the victims of the Holocaust on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

President Isaac Herzog along with representatives from government and state institutions attended a ceremony held at the Holocaust Museum in West Jerusalem, according to a statement by the Israeli Presidency.

Speaking at the ceremony, Herzog said his late father, who was the sixth president of Israel, also took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in the British army during World War II.

Herzog underlined that his late father described the scenes he saw in the camp as "the shame of humanity.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid meanwhile attended a commemoration event at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer.

Lapid’s paternal grandfather Bela Lampel was killed at the camp in April 1945.

In Germany, Nazis systematically murdered millions of people, especially Jews, the disabled, prisoners of war, Poles and other Slavs during the 1939-1945 period.

The number of Jews who were victims of the Holocaust during World War II is estimated at approximately 6 million.

The UN General Assembly designated Jan. 27 – the date the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Soviet army – as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.