On January 27, the synagogue in the Yekaterinburg JCC hosted a memorial ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The event opened with lighting candles in memory of the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Chief Rabbi of Sverdlovsk Region Zelig Ashkenazi, who is also a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary serving in the region, read a memorial prayer. Presentations were also made by many of the other officials and dignitaries present at the ceremony.
The dignitaries in attendance included Roi Rozenblit - Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Russia, U.S. Consul General Michael Reinert, British Consul General James McGuair, Consul General of France Pierre Filatoff, Czech Consul General Miroslav Ramesh, German Deputy Consul General Markus Forster, China’s Consul General Yang Shu Ying.
Also in attendance at the Memorial were Semyon Spektor, Chairman of Sverdlovsk Regional Association of Former Ghetto and Nazi Concentration Camps, Jewish community Chairman Yakov Soskin, as well as Vladimir Raputa, the Chairman of the Association of Jewish War Veterans in Yekaterinburg, in addition to representatives of the Office of the President of the Russian Federation in the Urals Federal District, the Sverdlovsk Region Administration, and the City of Yekaterinburg.
Children and youth recited poems and performed several musical numbers dedicated to the Holocaust. The hall was filled to capacity.