Yom HaShoah
The word “Shoah” means a complete destruction by fire. It has become synonymous with the extermination of six million Jews during the World War II.
Yom HaShoah is dedicated to memory of those victims.
On this day we recall all the tragic events that occurred during the Holocaust.
On this day we remember six million Jews, among them a million children that were killed by Nazis.
On this day we admire the spiritual strength of Jewish men, women and children, who faced the inhuman conditions and had to make impossible choices but still kept their faith, religion, morality and humanity.
Their physical resistance is certainly worthy of our admiration too — wherever possible the Jewish people revolted and fought against the tyranny of the Nazis. We all remember the upraising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.
The Yom HaShoah — The Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and heroism is kept on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan. The resolution to commemorate that tragedy was accepted by Knesset on the April 12th, 1951.
The official ceremony is being held on this day at the Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem). During this ceremony all the Israeli flags are half-lowed to honor the day of mourning.
In the morning on the Yom HaShoah the air raid siren is sounded countrywide. All the work pauses, the cars and even trains stop. The whole nation freezes in the two minutes of silence tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.
During these minutes we think about those six million innocent souls annihilated only because they were Jewish.
We think and we pray. We pray that this destruction and terror will never happen again. That our children will never forget and will pass this knowledge to their children.
This memory is painful, the weight of the awful knowledge is heavy, but we must remember. Because, the only guarantee that such horrible, cold-blooded extermination of a whole nation will never happen again – is our memory.
We must remember! Never again!
