Yom HaShoah: Israelis, Jews and more mark Holocaust Remembrance Day

SUNSET WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15: An Israeli memorial for the tragic 6 million Jewish deaths during the Holocaust is commemorated worldwide as Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Israel, state-sponsored and synagogue ceremonies, moments of silence and a March of the Living all paint the picture of this solemn observance.

Literally “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day,” Yom HaShoah has been defined, in recent decades, as having a scope broader than the millions of deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their allies: Today, the millions who mark this annual observance also remember the Jewish resistance during that era, they celebrate righteous acts in such dangerous times, and they emphasize the meaning of human dignity. (Learn more from the Jewish Virtual Library.)

Yom HaShoah was inaugurated in Israel in 1953, and by the next decade, a siren of silence filled the country’s streets for several minutes each year on the 27th of Nisan. No public entertainment is permitted on Yom HaShoah, and all radio and television programs focus on the day’s memorial.

Did you know? Yom HaShoah was originally intended for Nisan 14—the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising—but was shifted to Nisan 27 because of the original date’s proximity to the start of Passover.

In 1953, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi signed the proposal for Yom HaShoah, enacting it as law. In Israel, Yom HaShoah is a national memorial day. Flags are flown at half mast; sirens blare in the evening and the following morning; services are held at military bases, in schools and by various organizations. (Wikipedia has details.) Though no specific rituals are carried out on this day, memorial candles and prayers are common. (Note: Some Orthodox Jews choose to remember Holocaust victims on other Jewish days of mourning, and not on Yom HaShoah.)

MARCH OF THE LIVING AND ‘I BELIEVE’

Each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, thousands of Israeli teenagers, Jews and non-Jews from across the globe embark on The March of the Living, a ceremonial walk that vividly contrasts the Holocaust death marches. This year will mark the 27th annual March of the Living with young people gathering from more than 45 countries. (The Jerusalem Post reported.) This year will focus on “passing the torch,” notes the organization’s chairman, as each year brings fewer Holocaust survivors.

No complete musical liturgy existed for Yom HaShoah until recently, when Daniel Gross—a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and The Juilliard School, and cantor in Farmington Hills, Mich.—composed I Believe—A Shoah Requiem. (Watch it performed, here.) On April 7, 2013, I Believe had its world premiere presentation at Orchestra Hall in Detroit, Mich. (In 2013, My Jewish Detroit interviewed Gross.)

IN THE NEWS: FRENCH MAYORS VISIT ISRAEL

Israel will welcome 20 French mayors on Yom HaShoah this year, all of whom are visiting for the same reason: each has a resident back home in France who has been designated as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor given by the state of Israel to non-Jews who jeopardized their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. (Read the story in The Algemeiner.) When the mayors learned that they did not know the stories behind some of their own Righteous Among the Nations, they began to dig deeper—and that research led them to Israel, to more information and to the possibility of additional memorials within the towns.