The State of Israel — and many Jewish communities around the world — will observe its annual Holocaust Memorial Day, known as Yom HaShoah ve-HaGevurah, on Monday evening through Tuesday evening.
The annual observance was established by the Israeli government decades ago on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nissan as a tribute to the Jewish fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. In April of that year, after much of the Jewish population of the ghetto had been sent to death camps, a small band of Jewish resistance fighters used smuggled and homemade weapons to hold off the might of the Nazi military for weeks.
The battle ultimately ended in defeat for the ghetto’s Jewish warriors, but sparked a broader uprising, led by Polish resistance fighters, outside the ghetto, and was an important event in the ultimate defeat of Nazism.
Yom HaShoah is separate from the International Holocaust Memorial Day, a more recent observance created by the United Nations to coincide with the Soviet liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945.
As Breitbart News noted last year, in “Why Many Jews Observe a Different Holocaust Memorial Day”:
January 27 marks International Holocaust Memorial Day, but many Jews have long observed the anniversary of the Holocaust on a different occasion.
…
Unlike the 27th of January, which sees Jews only as victims, Yom HaShoah marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, a monument to Jewish resistance.
…
Moreover, the UN resolution designating January 27 as a Holocaust memorial includes Jews only briefly, among a list of other victims (“countless members of other minorities”). When the new Trump administration issued a statement marking International Holocaust Memorial Day in 2017 that omitted Jews specifically, critics accused Trump of “Holocaust denial,” but the oversight — which is all it was — mirrored the UN’s lack of emphasis on Jews as the primary victims of the Nazis.
As part of Israel’s annual observance of Yom HaShoah, an air raid siren will sound Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. for two minutes, during which life will come to a complete standstill. Drivers will even stop their cars and stand outside them at solemn attention.
Next week will feature Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.