Yom Hashoah is Israel’s day of remembrance of the six million Jewish people who perished in the Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew). It falls on 27th Nissan (in the Hebrew calendar).
The date reflects the start of the Uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto and was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as a way of remembering those who were murdered in the Holocaust. It has since become a day commemorated by Jewish communities around the world. The time is used to hold memorial services as well as provide educational programmes about the Holocaust.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOM HASHOAH AND HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY?
Where Yom Hashoah is a day specifically for the Jewish community to reflect, Holocaust Memory Day is a day for everyone internationally to come together, regardless of race or religion, to remember the victims of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides. It was designated in 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7.
Holocaust Memorial Day falls on 27th January, which marks the day of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1945.
Holocaust Memorial Day Trust www.hmd.org.uk
Marina Smith MBE, Co-founder of the National Holocaust Centre
“By keeping the memory alive we can say, ‘This is what happened in Europe when prejudice and discrimination took control; this is what will always happen.’ In the present climate, this isn't just a historical thing; it has immediacy.”
Dr Stephen Smith, Co-founder of the National Holocaust Centre
... writing in 2005
“Hitler intended to wipe out European Jewry without a trace. But he can never succeed when we remember. Today, the Survivors write, talk, share and carry out their terrible mission of bearing witness to the destruction of European Jews. By their actions the memory of those communities live on.”
“We will be bearers of witness and today we remember our Survivor family’s loved ones with deep respect and remember that as we take that responsibility to remember seriously, we are their memory.”
Dr James Smith, Co-founder of the National Holocaust Centre
... speaking on Yom HaShoah in 2001 about what young people in the future will need to know:
“One thing they will need to know is that the Holocaust was a European event born out of European experience.
They will need to understand the development of race ideology in its varied forms and its genesis in the colonial environment.
“They will need to know that the Jews of Europe had a long, rich and significant history on the European continent; that they were made to be strangers in their own homelands and were driven to the fringes of their own environment.
They will need to know that the Holocaust was successful; that the survivors were the exception rather than the rule; that in Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and many other countries, the Jews were all but totally destroyed, and whatever remained was less than a shadow of its former existence.
“Will we have provided dignity to the memory of the victims?”
“Will we have retrieved their names, to give them a sense of perpetuity?
“Will the sites be committed to them for all time?
“Will we have learned how to distil the lessons into a meaningful stimulus for action in the future?”
“Will it affect our values, our moral choices and our actions? And how will we have applied our learning?”