Israel on Tuesday, April 18, commemorated Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, remembering the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazis, while honoring the brave Jewish resistance warriors who battled to defeat the regime of evil.
As occurs each year, sirens across the country blared for two minutes beginning at 10 a.m., bringing life to a standstill, with cars and trucks coming to a halt on motorways so that citizens could pause, reflect and remember.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog placed wreaths at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial before attending a ceremony in the Knesset during which names of Holocaust victims were read.
Herzog also spoke at the nation’s opening ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2023 at Yad Vashem on Monday, April 17.
“I appeal to you, citizens of Israel, with a simple prayer: Let us leave these sacred days, which begin tonight and end on Independence Day, above all dispute,” he said. “Let us all come together, as always, in partnership, in grief, in remembrance. … We are one people and one people we shall remain, brought together not only by a painful history, but also by our shared, hope-filled future and fate.”
Netanyahu spoke as well, telling the story of a Holocaust survivor who had moved to Israel, was blessed with a large family and ultimately, as an older man, began working at the Kotel.
“That was the greatest victory over the Nazis,” Netanyahu said. Working every day at the Kotel, the man, who passed away at 95 a year-and-a-half ago, felt there was a great turn from Holocaust to rebirth and resurrection. “A true symbol of our triumph over our enemies.”
The scars of the pain of the Holocaust remain forever, he continued. But he also said to the survivors, “You chose life. You believed in good. You helped others.” Many started large families, he noted.
“The height of this victory is the independence of our 75-year-old country. Israel is a vibrant, free, democratic country, with so many achievements,” he said.
But past victories don’t guarantee future ones, and there is a “relentless battle against those who seek to kill us,” Netanyahu cautioned. He said Israel must not allow a nuclear Iran and must fight its terrorist proxies all around.
“Our enemies,” he stated, “will find us standing shoulder to shoulder together.”
This year also marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943.
Each year, thousands of people from around the world take part in the event held at the site of the former death camp which the Nazis built following the invasion of Poland in 1939. This year’s March was attended by 42 Holocaust survivors and 9,000 participants, including the current and immediate past U.S. ambassadors to Israel, Thomas Nides and David Friedman, who led this year’s march in what the organization described as a bipartisan commitment to combating Jew-hatred.
In Germany, the Israeli embassy commemorated the millions who were murdered with a ceremony at the Sachsenhausen Memorial, the site of a Nazi concentration camp, also on Tuesday.
German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann denounced the Nazi regime’s crimes at the commemoration event. “We will feel the shame forever,” he said.
By Jewish Link Staff
