Paris Holocaust ceremony amid high security

PARIS, April 18 (AFP) – Politicians and leaders of France’s Jewish community gathered in Paris under high security Sunday to commemorate the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust in World War II.

Around 1,000 people turned out for the ceremony on a square where a velodrome used to stand, which served as a collection point for French Jews before they were taken away to extermination camps.

Unlike in previous years, the ceremony was not exclusively open to Jews.Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope and the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, attended.

The Israeli ambassador to France, Nissim Zvili, and the head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Roger Cukierman, were among the Jewish figures and rabbis present.

Police carefully screened many attendees and set up patrols around the venue.

Israel five decades ago declared April 19, 1943 Yom Hashoah, or the day of the Holocaust, in memory of those killed and those who rose up in the ghetto of Warsaw. Another, smaller ceremony is to take place in Paris on Monday.

© AFP                                                   

                                                         Subject: French news