The names of thousands of people killed in the Holocaust will be read aloud as part of a 25-hour vigil planned for Pasadena City Hall this weekend.

“Every Person Has a Name” will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday on the City Hall steps with speeches from local elected officials and musical performances. The name-reading will begin following the ceremony and continue over the next day, concluding 8 p.m. Sunday. It’s being organized by The Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys.

“We’re talking about people who lived over 70 years ago and for many of these people, they don’t have any family left to remember them,” Jason Moss, executive director of the federation, said in an interview. “You have a chance to keep their memory alive by uttering their name.”

Sunday is the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, designated by the United Nations to commemorate the massive slaughter of Jews and others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

That includes 6 million Jews, 7 million Soviet civilians (including 1.3 million Soviet Jewish civilians), 3 million Soviet prisoners of war (including 50,000 Jewish soldiers), 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish civilians, 312,000 Serb civilians, as many as 250,000 people with disabilities living in institutions, 196,000 to 220,000 Roma, at least 70,000 repeat criminal offenders and so-called asocials, 1,900 Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as homosexuals and German political opponents, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Despite the daylong reading of names, Moss said he expects only a fraction of the names supplied by Israel’s Yad Vashem will be read — “however many names we can get through. I don’t know what the exact number will be, but it will be in the thousands,” he said.

Volunteer readers will take 30-minute shifts. Up first are Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors, who will read the names of their family members who were killed. Community volunteers will continue the work for the duration of the vigil.

Volunteers can sign up at jewishsgpv.org or by calling 626-445-0810.

Moss said pervasive anti-Semitism in Europe and the risk of people forgetting about the Holocaust were motivators in organizing the event.

The idea came from the Jewish Federation’s outreach coordinator Kim Banaji, who participated in a similar event in Israel, he said.

Invited to speak are Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Pasadena, and others. The Jewish Federation’s Jewish YouthOrchestra and chorale group Kol HaEmek will perform.