Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah in Hebrew, is commemorated in Israel on the 27th of Nisan, a month in the Jewish calendar that falls between April and May. It is marked by a ceremony in which six torches are lit in memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, which this year will take place tomorrow, Wednesday.
The ceremony, which will be attended by the Israeli president and prime minister, along with survivors and families of victims, will begin at 20 p.m. at the Holocaust Remembrance Center, or Yad Vashem, located on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
The six torches will be lit by six Holocaust survivors: Arie Durst, born in Poland (now Ukraine) in 1933; Monika Barzel, born in Berlin in 1937; Felix Sorin, born in Belarus in 1932; Rachel Katz, born in Belgium in 1937; Arie Reiter, a Romanian, born in 1929; and Gad Fartouk, a Tunisian, born in 1931.
They were all children when the Nazis came to power in Germany and launched the largest genocide in recorded human history.
The live broadcast of the ceremony, available on Yad Vashem's YouTube page, will include simultaneous translations into Spanish, English, Hebrew, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.
The following day (Thursday), at 10:XNUMX a.m., air raid sirens will sound for two minutes across the country. People usually stop what they're doing (even cars on the highway move over) and remain silent.
Afterwards, leaders and representatives of the survivor groups will place wreaths under the torches.
This year, the central theme of the Yom HaShoah It will mark 80 years since the defeat of the Nazis and the end of World War II, when “joy spread throughout the world,” explains the Yad Vashem center on its official website about the events.
“Allied soldiers gathered in the smoking ruins of Berlin, and military parades and public celebrations took place around the world, as well as on the European continent, which had just been liberated from the clutches of the Nazi regime,” he explains.
Israel's commemoration of Yom HaShoah follows the Jewish tradition of celebrating religious holidays over two days (from sunset to sunset), and is distinct from International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is celebrated on January 27.