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Thousands of ceremonies commemorating the memory of victims of the Holocaust were held worldwide on Monday, Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day – but only one ceremony specifically remembers the Jews who took great risks to save their fellows during the Holocaust. That ceremony takes place in the hills outside Beit Shemesh, at the Martyrs’ Forest Scroll of Fire Plaza, and is held by the B’nai B’rith World Center and the Jewish National Fund.

This year’s event memorialized the rescue activities of Otto Komoly, President of the Zionist Federation in Hungary during the Holocaust,, whose actions saved the lives of thousands of Jews. Komoly was abducted by agents of the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascist regime on January 1, 1945, barely two weeks before the liberation of Budapest, and all contact with him was lost. It is presumed that he was murdered and his body dispatched into the Danube River along with thousands of other Jews. Over 600,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, the vast majority in the months leading up to the end of the war…more.