YOM HASHOAH

 YOM HASHOAH

 

Yom Hashoah commemorates the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Yom Hashoah is celebrated on 27 Nisan. This year because of the conflict with Shabbat  it will fall earlier, on Wednesday the 23^rd of April.

In Israel at sundown there will be state ceremonies. The flag is lowered to half mast; the President and the Prime Minister deliver speeches. Holocaust survivors light six torches symbolizing the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and Chief Rabbis recite prayers.

During the daytime, ceremonies and services are held at schools, military bases and at public and community organizations.

On the eve of Yom HaShoah and the day itself, places of public entertainment are closed by law. Israeli television airs Holocaust documentaries and Holocaust-related talk shows, and low-key songs are played on the radio. Flags on public buildings are flown at half mast.

At 10:00 AM, a siren sounds throughout the country and Israelis observe two minutes of silence.  It is customary to pause whatever you are doing and to reflect. Motorists stop their cars in the middle of the road; stand by their vehicles in silence.

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We are to remember our brothers and sisters who died and the ones who survived. Also we remember the ones who were not victims, but who resisted, who were partisans.

Specifically, have in mind Isaac Einbender. He was from what is called today Belarus.  In 1941, Einbender and two others fled to the forest and formed a partisan unit.  He was sent to Moscow for guerilla warfare training.  He returned, breaking through German lines with 300 fighters.  He went back to the ghetto, looking for his parents.  They had been murdered by the Germans.  Thereafter he killed as many Germans as he could wherever he found them. 

Einbender was also responsible for derailing 16 trains.  We needed more like him then. We need more like him now. What would he have in mind for the perpetrators of the October 7th massacre?

In Israel, remembering the Holocaust is a big deal. It is a national holiday.  In the evening all businesses are closed.  If you get off the train at about 6 o’clock Nahariya will be like a ghost town, deathly quiet. And on Monday morning at 10 o’clock, the sirens wail for 2 minutes; traffic comes to a halt and people get out of their cars and bow their heads.  I saw this from my window and tried to capture the scene:

“The siren sounded at 10 o’clock.

I stood by the open window,

Peering into the street.

A balding young man in a black T-shirt; his head. bowed.

A woman holding a toddler; She bowed her head.

Another woman, child in hand, her head bowed.

The street cleaner stood still; he had stopped sweeping.

I stood, remembering, a tear ran down my cheek”.

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                              Jews marched through Kamenets to their execution site on the outskirts of town

My Jarmelofsky family came from an urban area in the Ukraine near Kamianets-Podilskyi.  Kamianets-Podilskyi was occupied by Germany on July 11, 1941.  One of the first and largest Holocaust mass-murder events occurred on 27–28 August 1941.  In those two days, 23,600 Jews were killed.  The Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre was the first mass action in the "final Solution" of the Germans. 

Eyewitnesses reported that the perpetrators made no effort to hide their deeds from the local population. 

I wonder how many of my Jarmelofsky cousins were slaughtered then.