Israeli President Reuven Rivlin lights a yahrtzeit candle at the Knesset on Holocaust Remembrance Day, May 2, 2019. Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO.

Israel’s Knesset marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday by reading out the names of victims of the Nazis.

The annual ceremony, called l’kol ish yesh shem or, “Every Person Has a Name,” was attended by President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, government ministers and Knesset members.

According to Hebrew news site Mako, President Rivlin told the assembly that his wife Nechama could not attend for health reasons, and therefore he would read out the names of her family members who were murdered in the Holocaust

“Every year we come here on Yom HaShoah and read the names of Holocaust victims,” Rivlin noted. “But there are so many names that we will never know, despite the never ending efforts to find them. My wife’s Nechama’s cousins, children, infants, babies who left no name behind. No one knows their names. They were here, and now have gone. May their memory be a blessing.”

The Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis recited psalms and the Kaddish prayer, and the chief hazan of the IDF recited the prayer “El Maleh Rahamim.” Government ministers and Knesset members lit candles in memory of the victims.

The stories of Holocaust survivors were also presented to the audience, and an actress read the recollections of survivor Yehudit Ashriel from the Knesset plenum.