22 Israeli cities held the Immortal Regiment march today, on the Victory Day by the Jewish calendar. In Jerusalem, people holding the portraits of their fathers and grandfathers marched to the monument in honor of the 200,000 Jews who died fighting the Nazis.
Sergey Pashkov with the details.
This stele at the Mount Herzl memorial is dedicated to the Jews who served in the Red Army. 250,000 of them didn't come back from the frontline of the Great Patriotic War. The Jews honor and remember their feat, realizing that without it, the state of Israel wouldn't have appeared on the map.
The descendants of the liberators, the children and grandchildren of the Holocaust victims, marched across Jerusalem holding the portraits of their heroes, the veterans of the Great Patriotic War who didn't live to see this day.
Vladimir Rezin's father liberated Kiev, one of his uncles entered Auschwitz and was abandoned by the Germans, the other one took Berlin.
Vladimir Rezin, participant: "There will be no war while we remember them. When we forget them, everything will turn upside down".
Today is the 26 of Iyar by the Jewish calendar. In 1945, the date coincided with the 9th of May. That's why, under the initiative of the head of the Charitable Foundation of Mountain Jews German Zakharyayev, a year ago, the Israeli parliament added the Day of Salvation and Liberation to the list of Israel's official memorial dates.
Uzi Dayan, participant: "I came here to say "thank you" to the soldiers of the Red Army and the veterans, as a person and as an Israel Defense Forces soldier".
Oleg Oleynin, participant: "Israel is the only country that doesn't demolish monuments and installs new monuments dedicated to the defenders of the Fatherland and the Red Army that emerged victorious from that war".
In the center of the ancient Jerusalem, next to the Wailing Wall, there's a banner in Hebrew and English reminding that today Jews are celebrating the Day of Salvation and Liberation, in accordance with their tradition. The head Ashkenazi rabbi in Israel, David Lau, and the head rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt, are reading the Kaddish, a memorial prayer for the heroes and victims, addressing their blessings to those in heaven who saved millions of lives by liberating the world from the Brown Plague.
Sergey Pashkov, Varvara Golemba, and Alexander Ivanyuk, Vesti, Jerusalem.
