Yom HaShoah and International Holocaust Memorial Day

The Hebrew People have endured a lot over the centuries. The fact that they held the El ʿElyon or Supreme God of paramount importance did not help, on the contrary, that was a good reason for many to resist them.

The persecution of Jews took on already some serious forms in 605 BCE, when Jews who lived in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were persecuted and deported. Whenever something went wrong in a country, it was no better to put the blame on the Jews. So it was they, who brought diseases, sorrow and gloom over people, bolts their opponents.

On 30 December 1066 a Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, in the Taifa of Granada, killed and crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela, and massacred much of the Jewish population of the city. Some 300 years later a display of antisemitism and violence against Jews took place in Castile and Aragon.
Jews in the Iberian Peninsula at that time were generally disliked, and violence against them was common even until the 15th century, but the year 1391 marked a peak of anti-Jewish violence.

The Catholic Church did a lot of harm in many countries, wanting the population to believe that the Jews killed Jesus Christ.

In the First Crusade (1096) and the Second Crusade (1147), Jews in France were subject to frequent massacres. Considered the so-called killers of the god of Christians they were hunted and were also subjected to attacks by the Shepherds’ Crusades of 1251 and 1320.
All English Jews were banished in 1290.

Henry of Trastámara had killed around 1,200 Jews in 1355, ordered a Jewish massacre in 1360, and was involved in the murder of many other Jews in 1366.
The Archdeacon of Ecija, Ferrand Martinez, a prominent member of the Catholic church, n his preaching used political anti-Judaism, harshly criticizing Jews and stirring the people up against them. the hate preaching led to around 4,000 Jews in Seville being murdered, their houses being attacked and destroyed, and those that weren’t killed were terrified into converting in an attempt to not be murdered as well.

100,000 Jews were expelled from France in 1396. In 1421, thousands were expelled from Austria. Many of the expelled Jews fled to Poland.

After Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories with large Jewish populations from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire from 1772 to 1815, Jews were reluctantly permitted to live in territories which were designated “the Pale of Settlement” (Cherta Osedlosti) by the Imperial Russian government.

During the 1860s a few exceptions were made to the increasing restriction of Jews to settlement only in the pale—which by the 19th century included all of Russian Poland, Lithuania, Belarus (Belorussia), most of Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula, and Bessarabia. Some merchants and artisans, those with higher educations, and those who had completed their military service could settle anywhere but in Finland. In the 1880s, however, the pendulum swung back toward restriction. A period of reaction arrived with the ascension of Tsar Alexander III in 1881. That year, the new tsar promulgated the “Temporary Laws,” which, among many regressive measures, prohibited further Jewish settlements outside the pale; and Christians within the pale were allowed to expel Jews from their areas. {pale – Encyc Brit.}

One can imagine that if Christians were allowed to take the estate freely from Jews, they would eagerly use it. Many Jews were therefore expelled from their settlements.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Russian Empire more and more mob attacks against Jews took place in so-called pogroms, (Russian: “devastations,” or “riots”)

The first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Although the assassin was not a Jew, and only one Jew was associated with him, false rumours aroused Russian mobs in more than 200 cities and towns to attack Jews and destroy their property. In the two decades following, pogroms gradually became less prevalent; but from 1903 to 1906 they were common throughout the country. Thereafter, to the end of the Russian monarchy, mob action against the Jews was intermittent and less widespread. {pogrom – mob attack – Encyc. Brit.}

Also in other countries occurred such attacks against Jews, notably in Poland, but the worst ones to signal a mass killing started at the night of November 9–10, 1938, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property. The litter of broken glass left in the German streets after these pogroms, gave it the name Kristallnacht, (German: “Crystal Night” – November 9–10, 1938) 1.000 synaghogues, 7.500 businesses, ransacked, burned or totally destroyed, whilst some 30.000 Jewish males age 16-60, were arrested. The 91 Jews killed those nights were nothing in comparison to what was going to happen next.

The Nazi government barred Jews from schools on November 15 and authorized local authorities to impose curfews in late November. By December 1938, Jews were banned from most public places in Germany.

What would take place in Western Europe in the mid-20th century remains for good in history, a great humanistic blot. As a human being and certainly not as a believer in the God of Abraham (which Christians claim to be anyway), one could not have allowed that abomination to happen. Yet a lot of Germans and Catholics turned a blind eye to what was taking place before their eyes and would become the greatest massacre in human history.

The systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children and millions of others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II is something nobody may ever forget. The Holocaust, or Shoah, altered Jews and Judaism forever.

Since the end of World War II, kehillot or Jewish communities have grappled with how and when to commemorate the Holocaust. As a result, just as there are many physical Holocaust memorials and museums around the world, there are many annual dates for memorializing this tragedy. But January 27 or Yom HaShoah has been called as a day of reminder or as the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, though not observed by all Jewish communities. Some Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities do not mark Yom HaShoah in a significant way. This is in part because these communities do not recognize or condone the secular Zionist state that established the day, and also because there are more traditional days for mourning (Tisha B’Av, for example) and ways to mourn (standing for a moment of silence, for instance, has no prior precedent in Jewish tradition).

It was the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, that passed the resolution creating Yom HaShoah in 1951. The 27^th of Nisan was chosen because it loosely corresponded to the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on Erev Passover, the 14^th of Nisan. However, because observing Yom HaShoah on that day would interfere with the preparations for Passover, it was not seriously considered as a potential national memorial day.

Many customs have become associated with the observance of Yom HaShoah in Israel. A two minute siren is heard twice during the day. Various ceremonies are held by schools and youth groups, and there is state ceremony at Yad VaShem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial and Museum. Other rituals include hearing testimony from survivors, lighting memorial (yahrzeit) candles, reading the names of the deceased and wearing white.

“March of the Living” at Auschwitz, 2014 – Yom HaShoah

The anniversary of the November Pogrom has become another Holocaust memorial day, though not as universally observed as Yom HaShoah. In Germany and Austria, both non-Jewish and Jewish ceremonies and events mark this date. These ceremonies often feature commemoration wreaths, Jewish prayers honouring the dead such as Mourners’ Kaddish or El Maleh Rahamim and survivors sharing their experiences (or the reading of eye-witness testimonies).

On January 27^th, 1945, the Soviet military liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex, and it was thereafter observed as memorial day for the Holocaust in various European countries. In 2005, 60 years after that liberation, the United Nations voted to designate it as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

 

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Preceding

1. The one who breached the wall of the academy
2. 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
3. 5th World Holocaust Forum
4. What’s the Future of Holocaust Remembrance?
5. 75 years after Auschwitz – Holocaust Education and Remembrance for Global Justice

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Additional reading

1. What to do in the Face of Global Anti-semitism
2. If you’re going to be a hater, make sure you’ve done your homework.
3. The written, the spoken, and the audible a part of the soul and a blessing to humanity but also the trigger to those who love Crusades and the Inquisition
4. Interned and tortured at Breendonk before deportation to Auschwitz and later Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
5. Holocaust memorial cobblestones laid around Europe – and beyond
6. Yad Vashem: Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future
7. Black page 70 years Release – commemoration Auschwitz
8. The fight against anti-Semitism is also a fight for a democratic, value-based Europe
9. Polish commemoration of the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau
10. Declaration of the Polish Associations for Jewish Studies and for Yiddish Studies concerning recent legislation on the Institute for National Remembrance
11. Is it really true that Anti-Semitism will never be tolerated?
12. Auschwitz survivors providing a warning of rising anti-Semitism and exclusion of free thinking
13. January 27 – 70 years ago Not an end yet to genocide
14. Children of a lost generation
15. Kindertransport
16. Christadelphians, the Kindertransport, and Rescue from the Holocaust
17. Children and grandchildren of a saved generation
18. By the commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp #2 Holocaust deniers and twisters of the truth
19. Signs of the Times – Tensions between Russia and Israel
20. United States of America once more showing how it wants to Distort Historical Facts and Truth
21. Not Anti-Black, Anti-Africa – A Guide to the Anti-Semitism/Anti-Zionism Debate
22. How a British ‘Master Spy’ Saved Thousands of Jews in the Holocaust
23. 97-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor scoring high on TikTok

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Related

1. International Holocaust Remembrance Day
2. Holocaust Memorial: 5 Fabrications That Led to the Holocaust
3. The Holocaust, Remarque’s contrition and Der Funke Leben
4. Holocaust survivor Friedländer dismayed by increasing anti-Semitism
5. Holocaust denier living double life in Scotland will be extradited to France
6. I was born on the day Auschwitz was liberated
7. A reflection on Yom Hashoah, 2023
8. The Abomination of Anti-Semitism
9. Remembering the Heroes on Yom Hashoah
10. What Happens When No One Remembers?
11. Yom HaShoah and the Silk Factory
12. Thoughts on Yom HaShoah 2023: Book Bans, Repeating History, and A Slight Glimmer of Hope
13. President Herzog’s speech Yom Hashoah 2023
14. Tftd: Wittenberg 18/4/2023
15. A Yom HaShoah Reflection
16. Yom Hashoah
17. Nd: Ghetto Uprising 80 
18. The Power of Symbols: On Jews, Sikhs, and Dr. Ruth
19. Survivors
20. Remembrance Day
21. Never Again!
22. the honor is all ours
23. El Al captain politicizes the Holocaust
24. Fort Ontario Observes Yom HaShoa With Ceremony
25. Jana Zimmer invited to speak at Yom HaShoah service
26. Yom Hashoah’s Ida Kramer Student Essay Contest 2024