CRI听力:Israel Marks 70 Years since End of WWII

The some 6-thousand in attendance, including WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors, have taken part in the ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

Once a year, the veterans wear suit jackets and uniforms dripping with medals.

91-year-old Baruch Shub was a guerrilla fighter who would dynamite German trains as part of an underground organization before he joined the Russian army to continue fighting against the Nazis.

"We are celebrating now the day of victory, because that's for us a very big day, although most of us are Jews, when we came out from the armies, we found out the Germans killed our children, our wives. So on one hand, you are happy because the war ended and we won, and on the other hand, you had nobody to rely on, all alone in the world."

Speaking at the ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the lessons learned from the days of the Holocaust are still relevant today.

"We must be capable, prepared and able to defend ourselves by ourselves against any threat. That is the lesson of 70 years since the victory over Nazism."
An estimated 6-million Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

Many of those who weren't rounded up for extermination often joined the Allied armies.

90-year-old Efraim-Fiodor Papernyi is a veteran of the Red Army.

"Half a million Jews fought against the Nazis in the Red Army, and 200,000 of them not returned. During the whole war 1.5 million Jewish fighters were on the front. They were fighting very bravely."

Papernyi has set up a museum in the Israeli city of Ashdod, displaying the history of the Jews who fought with the Red Army against the Nazis.

Konstantin Karno is his assistant.

"He wants to tell the stories of what happened during the war, so no more wars like this will happen again."

And while veterans dominated the event, many young people were also in attendance.

"I hope it will never happen again. We should learn not be racist against anybody. We should be good people. We should help people in need in hard times."

"We should love each other as who they are, not from their color or where are they from."

Officials in Israel have been making concerted efforts to educate the country's youth about the Holocaust and the war against the Nazis, as not many of the surviving generation from World War II are left to recount the past.