On 27 Nissan (usually at the end of April/beginning of May), Israel observes Yom haZikaron laSho’a weLaGwura (Holocaust and Jewish Heroism Remembrance Day), popularly known as Yom haSho’a, the country’s national Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was originally intended to fall on the anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but as it coincided with the night before Passover (14 Nissan), a later day in the uprising became Israel’s national day of commemoration. The word Shoah (‘catastrophe’) comes from Hebrew and refers to the genocide of European Jews during the Nazi era; it is comparable to the Romani word ‘Porajmos’. Religious Jews often reject the word Holocaust as it stems from Christian theology. Nevertheless, many communities use it to describe all crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis, and not only those committed against specific collectives. Pages could be filled in discussion of these terms. Yet this much can be said: the Anglo-American use of the terminology differs greatly from that in other national contexts.
Alongside Yom haAtzma’ut and Yom Yerushalaim, Yom haSho’a is one of a series of national holidays that were not a part of the traditional Jewish calendar before the founding of the State of Israel. The day is usually marked with a public ceremony at Yad Vashem, during which sirens bring the entire country to a standstill while everyone observes two minutes of silence. While the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are commemorated, vehicles on the motorway come to a standstill in the emergency lane, business ceases across the country, and there is complete silence. The idea of commemorating a national catastrophe by upholding the memory of the heroic uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto is rooted in the way the young state of Israel approached the genocide. Since its founding and to this day, the nation has viewed Jewish self-determination as the antithesis of victimhood, as the only guarantee that Jews can never again be sent defenceless to gas chambers. The pioneering spirit of the newly founded Jewish state even caused many survivors to feel shame at their victimhood. After all, many a call had gone out to them to defend the young Jewish state by force in its early wars. It was therefore the heroic, albeit futile, attempt to revolt against the Nazis in Warsaw that should be remembered, and not the liberation of a concentration camp. The Jewish state ensured that the memory of the Jewish resistance was kept alive just as much as the memory of Jewish victimhood. Even if – from an historical perspective – there were only a few Jewish acts of resistance, it is all too understandable that they should be remembered. Today, of course, we know why there were so few: because of the appalling sophistication and industrialised approach of the German machinery of death. It was only after the trial of Eichmann, broadcast publicly in the early 1960s, that many survivors began to tell their stories as the extent of the genocide, the sheer destruction, had finally become clear to the entire nation. Since then, the day and how it is observed in Israel has changed dramatically.
Jewish communities around the world observe the day as a more intimate form of remembrance, limited to the community. In addition, another day of remembrance is observed in many of those countries – often on 27 January. In this sense, an Israeli bank holiday has entered the Jewish calendar. Politicians and representatives of the state are rarely invited to the ceremonies marking Yom haSho’a, with religious ceremonies often being held. Particular prayers are recited, such as a special version of El Male Rachamim (The Lord is Full of Mercy). Communities invite the survivors who are still with us to speak, with many generations of families coming together in dialogue and attaching personal forms of remembrance to the day.
The Jewish community in Berlin, for example, begins by reading out the names of the 55,696 murdered Berlin Jews in front of their community centre in Fasanenstraße. Normally, the local youth organisation coordinates the event, and this ceremony alone takes several days of uninterrupted reading. A delegation of around 17,000 young people set off on the ‘March of the Living’ every year to provide a counterpoint to the death marches. They often sing and dance with their relatives who survived. After spending a week in Poland visiting many of the camps and learning about Jewish life in pre-war Poland, many of them travel on to Israel to celebrate Independence Day on 5 Iyar.
When I was a youth leader in Berlin, we would often fill in the gaps in the timetable for reading out the names, so we would often read through whole nights. Someone said to me at the time that if we wanted to observe a minute’s silence for each of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, we would have to remain silent for about eleven and a half years.