College Green vigil remembers victims of Holocaust

Students gathered on College Green last night for a ceremony to mark the beginning of a 24-hour vigil to remember Holocaust victims. Their names will be read by members of the University community throughout the day, according to College senior Ruth Zakarin, chairperson of the Holocaust Education Committee. According to Zakarin, similar observances took place in Israel over the weekend as part of Yom Hashaoh Ugevureh, an annual holiday which is held in order to remember those who died in the Holocaust. Several students read first hand accounts of Holocaust survivors and a poem written by an anonymous member of the University community before they began listing a fraction of the six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. The vigil will conclude tonight at 8:30 p.m. with a closing ceremony which will be followed by a candlelight march down Locust Walk, Zakarin said. Students attending the ceremony said remembering the Holocaust is necessary to ensure that a similar situation will never happen again. "Some millions of people were not given a chance to live," said Bradley Dock, a College freshman. "That's important so it can never happen again." Shawn Ruby, a College junior, said that the "ethnic cleansing" of Moslems in Bosnia is proof that a situation like the Holocaust can happen again and that the Jewish community, as well as the world, must protest in order to stop it from happening. Today, yellow stars will be handed out on Locust Walk. These stars are reminiscient of the ones which the Nazis forced European Jews to wear in order to differentiate them from members of other religious groups. Zakarin said that she hopes that the entire University community will wear the stars in order to demonstrate that the Holocaust's significance is realized by more than only its Jewish members. A moment of silence to remember the six million who died will be held on Locust Walk at 11:55 a.m., Zakarin said.