Almost 70 years ago an atrocity that still echoes within our minds today, we remember. We remember all the people who suffered under the inhumane travesties that had the misfortune to befall society at that time. Yom HaShoah from Hebrew translates as Holocaust Remembrance Day or Holocaust Day. Its a day observed as Israel’s and the world’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its accessories, and for the Jewish resistance in that periods. It’s also a day of remembrance for the more than 11 million people of various ethnic groups that were persecuted and murdered, for example over 2.5 million Poles and its estimated around 15,000 homosexuals were killed during the Holocaust.

In Israel, it is a national memorial day and public holiday. It was inaugurated on 1953, anchored by a law signed by the Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion and the President of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. It is held on the 27th of Nisan (April/May), unless the 27th would be adjacent to Shabbat, in which case the date is shifted by a day. In other countries there are different commemorative days of Yom HaShoah.

What this day lets us do is to teach us: Never Again. We should never forget that we are all people of the same world. We should never forget the freedoms we have achieved not merely for ourselves, but the hope that we have created and can grow for a brighter future for all people. For the saying, as trivial as it might sound, history repeats itself first as a tragedy and second as a farce, and all’s we can say is simply…never again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
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