Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah in Hebrew) is a national day of commemoration in Israel, on which the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are memorialized. It is a solemn day, beginning at sunset on the 27th of the month of Nisan (Sunday evening, April 15, 2007) and ending the following evening, according to the traditional Jewish custom of marking a day. Places of entertainment are closed and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country.
The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem and are broadcast on the television. Marking the start of the day, in the presence of the Acting President of the State of Israel and the Prime Minister, dignitaries, survivors, children of survivors and their families, gather together with the general public to take part in the memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem in which six torches, representing the six million murdered Jews, are lit. The following morning, the ceremony at Yad Vashem begins with the sounding of a siren for two minutes throughout the entire country. For the duration of the sounding, work is halted, people walking in the streets stop, cars pull off to the side of the road and everybody stands at silent attention in reverence to the victims of the Holocaust.
Afterward, the focus of the ceremony at Yad Vashem is the laying of wreaths at the foot of the six torches, by dignitaries and the representatives of survivor groups and institutions. Other sites of remembrance in Israel, such as the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, also host memorial ceremonies, as do schools, military bases, municipalities and places of work.
The theme of Holocaust Remembrance Day this year is "Bearing witness". Each of the tens of thousands of written, audio and video testimonies of survivors have been recorded adds one more fragment of information about the Holocaust, one more piece in a picture of unimaginable cruelty and mass murder. The personal stories present the Jews as human beings, restoring their identities.
Message from Dalia Itzik,
Acting President of the State of Israel and Speaker of the Knesset
This year, Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day will be dedicated to witnesses and testimonies “So that the generations to come might know” (Psalms 78, 6).
The records and the testimonies have been collected from letters, diaries and drawings and from scraps of paper hidden away during the Shoah that recorded the terrible pain and suffering. The survivors, the She’erit HaPleta, felt a compelling need to describe in prose and poetry what they had experienced during those terrible years in Europe from a personal standpoint. These testimonies and documents provide an invaluable insight into those terrible years during which the Jewish People lost one third of its number.
There are two principal lessons to be learned from the history of the Holocaust. The first is the vital need for a strong Jewish state. As the founders of the State of Israel noted in the Declaration of Independence, the Holocaust clearly proved the need to reestablish the Jewish people in an independent state in their homeland. Indeed, the State of Israel, which was established only 18 months after the end of the Holocaust, is the best guarantee that the Holocaust will never be repeated. In the new State of Israel we raised up, together with the survivors, the fallen Sukkat David [The Tabernacle of David] as prophesied by Amos, and established a democratic Jewish State committed to human dignity and liberty. This is the second lesson to be learned from the Holocaust. We must provide everyone, whatever their race, religion or sex, the protection of the state and fundamental human rights, and must seek the total elimination of racism or anti-semitism in whatever form throughout the world. All these principles are an integral part of the basic ideology of the State of Israel.
When we look back over what the Jewish state has achieved in its fifty-nine years of existence, our hearts fill with pride. When we review the path we have travelled, a path that has been paved with wars and existential struggles ever since the Holocaust, we can draw strength and encouragement and perhaps even a tiny drop of comfort.
On Yom Hashoah we shall remember, both in the State of Israel and in Jewish communities throughout the world, that “Unto Every Person There Is a Name”. We shall remember that many of the victims died leaving no relative or friend to recall their memory.
It is our national and our personal duty to remember every single martyr.
Yehi zichram baruch - May their memory be for a blessing and may their memory continue for all eternity.