The march and the rally waved the Red Army, Israeli and Russian flags, as the participants thronged down the central Herzl Street
Several thousand people joined the march of World War II veterans and the Immortal Regiment public rally in Haifa, Israel’s business and manufacturing center, a TASS correspondent said in an eyewitness account of the event.
The march and the rally waved the Red Army, Israeli and Russian flags, as the participants thronged down the central Herzl Street.
Rank-and-file residents of the city, university and general school students, soldiers, shop owners and their customers, and the staff and visitors of restaurants met with participants in the rally with applause and joined the column.
In line with tradition that had taken shape over years, Russian-speaking deputies of the Israeli Knesset, city officials and members of the diplomatic corps attended the rally.
Avner Korin, the press secretary of Haifa’s Department for Absorption told TASS the tradition of parades timed for the VE-Day emerged in Haifa thirteen years ago.
“The first march of veterans was held in 2004 and in 2005 we marked the 60th anniversary since the Great Victory with a parade on Herzl Street that was closed for automobile traffic for forty minutes for this purpose,” he said.
“Already in the first years of the parades the city residents began to come to them with the portraits of their family members, relatives and friends – not only the ones who had fought on the Soviet Front of WW II but also those who had perished in concentration camps and ghettos.
Natan Grinberg, the coordinator of the Immortal Regiment rallies in Israel, say they would be held in about twenty cities and towns this year stretching from the very North to the very South of the country.
Israel joined the Immortal Regiment international public movement in 2014.
“We’re paying tribute today to the people who fought on the frontlines, who worked on the home front, who made this Great Victory possible but who didn’t live through to our day,” Alexander Shein, the Russian ambassador to Israel said at the meeting in Haifa. “Dear veterans, today with give our praise to you, the people who lived through the harsh tests of time.”
“You’re the eyewitnesses and participants of the greatest and simultaneously most tragic events of the 20th century,” he said. “You accomplished exploits and managed to win and save the world from the plague of Nazism. You saved the Jewish people from full extermination and other peoples, from full enslavement.”
On the same day, an auto and bike rally devoted to the 72nd anniversary of Victory in WW II started from the country’s northernmost town of Metula. It will cross the entire Israel north to south and will reach the beach city of Eilat on the Red Sea.
“Our rally commemorates the people who threw their shoulder to the defeat of fascism,” a spokesman for the Immortal Regiment action organizing committee told TASS. “We’ll carry the banner of victory through the whole country and will remind the world about who made the most decisive contribution to the righteous cause.”.