Hundreds Honor Holocaust Victims At Ceremony In Philadelphia
By Suzanne Monaghan
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - This year's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony in Philadelphia marked 70 years since the liberation of some concentration camps and the end of World War II.
Hundreds came out Sunday to remember the six million people killed, including some people who lived through the event.
"I was incarcerated in Siberia for five years," 81-year-old Holocaust survivor Miriam Cain tells KYW Newsradio. "At the age of seven-and-a-half I was taken away from home because my parents were considered Capitalists."
The names of some of the 1.5 million children killed during the Holocaust were read during the ceremony.
"Our children and grandchildren need to hear it," Cain says. "They need to know what happened in order that it should never, ever happen again to anybody."
Naomi Adler is the CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Jewish Federation. She says each year, they find more people who were part of the liberation:
"It is an extraordinary experience to sit down with someone who has liberated a camp and to talk to them about detail is extremely difficult for the images flash in front of their mind as they are speaking with you."
Event chair Sarita Gocial says children from area Hebrew schools got to have breakfast with some survivors:
"And they were able to sit at tables with survivors and actually ask questions and have private conversations with them and really get to know what they went through."
The ceremony also included a memorial candle lighting.