Undaunted by yesterday's heavy rains and chilling winds, 96 students and faculty members each spent five minutes at a makeshift podium on the steps of Widener Library reading aloud the names of victims of the Holocaust.

The recitation of names was one of many commemorative efforts occurring across the world yesterday for Holocaust Remembrance Day, according to co-coordinator of the event Michael A. Kay '01.

When Israel was formed in 1948, the new government established this day to memorialize the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Organizers from Hillel predicted that participants--who included Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 and Adams House Master Robert J. Kiely--recited several thousand names in the course of the eight-hour event.

Kay said the process of reading names individually helped ensure continued contemplation and remembrance of the Holocaust's atrocities.

"This is a way to personalize the tragedy," Kay said. "It's easy to just say that six million people died, but when you say each name, [the Holocaust] becomes a lot more significant."

Though Kay acknowledged that a majority of the participants were Jewish students, he and co-coordinator Michal Engelman '01 said they were nonetheless heartened by the number of non-Jewish people who signed up to read names.

"We specifically made a point to include a lot of [other religious and ethnic] groups," Engelman said. "The prejudice, oppression and persecution of the Holocaust are themes that, sadly, are familiar to many people."

Among other groups, representatives from the Black Students Association (BSA), the Arab Students Alliance and the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) agreed to participate in the reading, Kay said.

Standing under umbrellas and speaking into a microphone wrapped in plastic, the participants battled heavy rain and wind to read in five-minute shifts from a book listing 19,000 Holocaust victims. According to Kay, it takes about five years for participants to read through all of the names.

For Andrew H. Crouch, a campus minister who works with HRCF, reading Holocaust victims' names yesterday for the first time was an "overwhelming" experience.

But Crouch said presenting the reality of the Holocaust to students is an important goal.

"At this...wonderful institution, it seems important once and a while to be confronted with the reality of evil," he said.

While reading, Crouch said he was concerned that he may have mispronounced some victims' names.

"Each of those names was a person who, when they were alive, liked to hear their names pronounced correctly," Crouch said.