Jews Around The World Pay Special Tribute

For two minutes Monday, air-raid sirens wailed, pedestrians stopped in their tracks and motorists halted their cars and stood silently beside them in the middle of streets and intersections across Israel.

The sight still startles the uninitiated and is among the most solemn moments on Israel’s calendar: The day the nation that rose from the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust pays tribute to the estimated 6 million Jews murdered in Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

Flags flew at half staff; Israel’s leaders, chief rabbis and politicians read aloud the names of some of the victims at the Knesset; television stations devoted nearly all programming to movies and documentaries about the Holocaust.

This year, the Jewish state and Jews around the world paid special tribute to the 1.5 million children lost in the Holocaust and honored adults who were children at the time and who escaped the Nazis or survived concentration camps where their parents died.