At 10 a.m. today in Israel, the sound of a soft siren blanketed the country. But in a stark departure from the past seven months, the siren was not sounded to alert citizens to prepare for impending rocket fire. Israeli men, women, and children didn’t run to the closest bomb shelter. Rather, as the siren blared, they stopped what they were doing, exited their cars, buses, and work meetings, and stood for two minutes in solemn remembrance, as they do each year on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, or “Yom HaShoah.”
In contrast to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed each year on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, Yom HaShoah in Israel always falls near the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April and May of 1943. Its meaning, then, must be distinguished. Whereas International Holocaust Remembrance Day recalls when the Jews of Auschwitz were rescued from the Nazis by gentiles, Yom HaShoah recalls when the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto took matters into their own hands and initiated the greatest Jewish revolt of the Holocaust.
The central commemorations on Yom HaShoah are held each year at Israel’s Holocaust museum, called “Yad Vashem,” which translates literally to “hand and name” in English. A seemingly weird title for a museum, perhaps, but not if you’re familiar with its Biblical heritage. In the book of Isaiah, God speaks of his promise to those Jews who are unable to have children to carry on their legacy, whose bloodlines have been cut off from the chain of Jewish continuity: “I will give them, in my house and within my walls, a hand and a name better than sons or daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not perish.”
Yad Vashem was established to fulfill that purpose, and it does so laudably. But it has always been the Israeli soldiers — each one taken to Yad Vashem during the course of his/her training — who truly bring that purpose to life. For when they put on their uniform to fight for the survival of the state of Israel and the Jews within it, they uphold the memory of the 6 million murdered by Hitler. They serve as the “hand and name” of those who could not stand for themselves.
This year, the ceremonies of Yom HaShoah are imbued with additional meaning. October 7, 2023, reminded the Jewish people of what the Jewish State exists in part to prevent: another Holocaust. The Israeli civilians and soldiers who have fought and died since that day fighting Hamas are tributes to the legacy of Mordecai Anielewicz, commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, who in his last letter before his death in the revolt wrote to a friend:
The fact that we are remembered beyond the ghetto walls encourages us in our struggle. Peace go with you, my friend! Perhaps we may still meet again! The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle.
On this Yom HaShoah, may the memories of Anielewicz and the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis be sanctified, and may the soldiers of the IDF be granted renewed strength and courage in their fight against Hamas — one in which they strive to ensure that the victims of the Holocaust are given a proper hand and name.