Virus forces Yad Vashem to mark Holocaust online

Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, was closed Wednesday on International Holocaust Remembrance Day amid coronavirus restrictions.

The museum was holding numerous online events and activities instead.

"We have hundreds of thousands of people participating in these events", said Yossi Gevir, Director of the Governmental and External Affairs Department at Yad Vashem.

January 27 was chosen by the United Nations in 2005 to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945.

More than six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Third Reich.

The vast majority of those killed in the Auschwitz death camp where Jews from across Europe, but other non-Jewish prisoners, including Poles, Roma, and Soviet soldiers were also among the victims.