For 24 hours, students of all backgrounds took turns standing in a tent outside the New University Union for one purpose: to read names.

The April 20 Yom HaShoah vigil paid tribute to the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, as well as those who survived. Hillel-Jewish Student Union coordinated the event with help from Chabad House, local synagogues, the Red Cross and the community.

“There are many reasons why people read … I read names because it quite literally puts a name to each of the victims,” said Alex Schwartz, who was the co-chair for Yom HaShoah, along with Dana Wellesly-Stein. “Also, I read because I feel that if one forgets the faults of the past, we will be doomed to repeat them.”

The event began with a memorial service at 7 p.m., which included prayers and readings by rabbis, community members and Ellen Leiman, a survivor of the Kindertransport who spoke of her experiences during the Holocaust. After all the Jewish men in Frankfurt, including her father, were taken away, Leiman left her family on Dec. 12, 1938, to travel to safety in England. Her father managed to escape from a concentration camp and later reunited with his family in London.

The ceremony concluded with a performance of “The Butterfly” by Kaskeset, Binghamton University’s Jewish a capella group.

According to Shana Kantor, the executive director of Hillel, this vigil is a yearly tradition at BU, stretching back to the 1970s.

“We have a very large Jewish population on campus and a lot of people have family or connection to people who were exterminated in the Holocaust,” she said. “So part of the way we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day is to remember and listen to stories, and I think it’s always been an event here that has brought out people who have a connection in one way or another.”

“A really amazing mix of people participated,” Kantor added.

Yellow buttons with the Jewish star and the word “remember” were handed out to people who stopped by the tent because Jews in ghettos had been required to wear stars pinned to their clothing, Kantor said.

According to Schwartz, a freshman, the reading itself went quickly. Pairs of people were responsible for hour-long blocks of time, so no individual had to read for more than half an hour.

Keren Wong, an undeclared freshman, learned about the event through the Outreach Committee of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. The vigil served as a commemoration, as well as a visible stand against hostility, she said.

“When I told some people that I was participating, they commented, ‘Are you even Jewish?’ No, I’m not. I’m a Christian,” she said. “But as a human and especially as a Christian, we mourn the events of the Holocaust and all of the hatred behind it.”

“Reading the names really hits you, seeing page after page of names. It’s a tangible reminder of all the lives that were wiped out,” she added.

According to Kantor, there was a very positive response to the vigil from students. Since the event took place in such a public location, many people stopped by to observe or ask what was happening.

For some, the event meant even more than commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust.

“In many ways I hoped the reading of the names would influence people to be more active in fighting genocides that are still taking place to this day,” Schwartz said. “All it takes is for one person to listen to what we were trying to get across and take action upon that idea for our actions to be justified.”