Yom Ha'Shoah - Holocuast Remembrance Day

, 16 November 2016
Sunset on Wednesday 4th May 2016 marks this years' Holocaust Remembrance Day. Inaugurated in 1953, it is commemorated on the 27th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. On this day, all flags in Israel are flown at half-mast in memory of the victims and heroes and two minutes silence is observed during which all traffic on the streets comes to a standstill. In Poland, the March of the Living takes place at the former German death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

During World War II, the Germans murdered around six million European Jews. This extermination destroyed entire communities, sometimes encompassing half the population of some cities. People perished in ghettoes, death camps, concentration camps and slave labour camps. The died from hunger and sickness, from mass and individual executions. Today, three thousand graves, monuments and other places of martyrdom testify to this genocide.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, we also remember those who, during World War II, resisted the Germans. Revolts and armed resistances took places in the camps at Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as in the Warsaw, Białystok, Nieśwież, Kleck, Łachwie, Głębok and other ghettoes. Jews also fought amongst the partisan units as well as in the ranks of the anti-Nazi allied armies.

Today, we honour both the victims and the heroes..