May 3 1951 – 27 Nisan 5711

Since 1951, 27 Nisan has been marked in Israel as Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day. Lessons and ceremonies commemorating the murder of European and North African Jewry by the Nazis and their accomplices are held in all Israeli schools, municipal events and survivors’ testimonies are well attended in every town and city, while the official government takes place in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial museum. Although the intention was to link Israel’s Holocaust memorial day with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and commemorate Jewish resistance to Nazi persecution and extermination policies as well as their six million victims, the date of 27 Nisan marks neither the beginning nor the end of the Jewish revolt. The ghetto’s Jewish defenders launched their first attack on 15 Nisan, Seder night, the festival of freedom (April 19 1943) – when the Nazis were least expecting it. They held out against the German tanks and SS units longer than the Polish army’s defense of its homeland, which crumbled after ten days. The Germans left the ghetto in ruins on 11 Iyar (May 16), after nearly four weeks in which they struggled to wipe out Jewish resistance.

So the date of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel is set for midway through the revolt, equally commemorating all victims of Nazi persecution.

Whether intentionally or otherwise the date of Yom HaShoah also creates a particularly intense experience within the Israeli calendar, from Holocaust Day (27 Nisan) to Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen (4 Iyar), which merges into Independence Day (5 Iyar). These Zionist “High Holy Days” essentially link Pesach, marking the birth of the Jewish people and its emergence from slavery to freedom, and the rebirth of that nation from the ashes of the Holocaust. The seven days from Yom HaShoah, 27 Nisan to 3 Iyar, create a sense of shiva, the customary seven-day Jewish mourning period for the dead, between the memory of the six million who perished and the memory of Israel’s war casualties and terrorist victims, commemorated on 4 Iyar. The continuum culminates next day, with Israel Independence Day, creating a unique emphasis marked by no other nation: remembering the sacrifices that allowed the revival of the Jewish people as a nation with its own homeland, in the build-up to celebrating that independence.

 

 

A Holocaust survivor lights a torch in memory of his family by the Holocaust memorial in Moshav Zofit's cemetery
A Holocaust survivor lights a torch in memory of his family by the Holocaust memorial in Moshav Zofit's cemetery Moshav Zofit Archive
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