On the eve of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah), Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara met with six Holocaust survivors who have been chosen to light the traditional torches during the official ceremony at Yad Vashem on Wednesday evening.

“You are very moving in your personal stories, which are also our collective stories,” Netanyahu told the survivors.

“I believe that no other people has experienced such a rebirth as we have – from the deepest abyss, from the greatest suffering, from the attempt at complete annihilation to a national and personal revival,” Netanyahu continued.

He referred to the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who had described the Jewish people as “fossils,” claiming they would not come back to life. Netanyahu countered: “We are not fossils. We carry within us a great life force that has enabled us to overcome the worst horrors in human history and to rebuild our country and our state.”

The six survivors who will participate in the ceremony are:

• Dov Barzel, born in 1938 in Ukraine;
• Erna Durst, born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia;
• Moshe Fartouk, born in 1935 in Tunisia;
• Rachel Katz, born in 1936 in Romania;
• Uri Reiter, born in 1935 in Poland;
• Moshe Sorin, born in 1933 in Romania.

Each of them will light one of the six torches symbolically representing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

The official state ceremony for Yom HaShoah will begin on Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. at the Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In addition to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan, Chief Rabbi David Lau, and other dignitaries will participate.

This year’s theme of the ceremony is “From the Depths: The Pain of Liberation and the Return to Life,” marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule.

The event will feature speeches, the lighting of the six torches, the recitation of the Kaddish prayer, and musical performances by artists Aya Korem and Benaia Barabi, as well as a reading by actor Yedidia Vital.