Israel came to a standstill at 10 a.m. (local time) on Thursday as sirens wailed throughout the country in memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
The annual Holocaust Remembrance Day is one of the most solemn days on Israel’s national calendar, with much of the country all but shutting down for those two minutes to honor those who suffered under the Nazi killing machine.
The siren halts Israeli outdoor life — pedestrians stand in place, buses stop on busy streets and cars pull over on major highways, with drivers standing on the roads with their heads bowed.
Ushering in Holocaust memorial day at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett late Wednesday called on the world to stop comparing the Holocaust to other events in history. He spoke after the presidents of both Ukraine and Russia drew parallels between their ongoing war and the genocide during World War II.
“As the years go by, there is more and more discourse in the world that compares other difficult events to the Holocaust. But no,” he said. “No event in history, cruel as it may have been, is comparable to the extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
He also warned the country against allowing its deep differences to tear the nation apart. The speech, coming on one of Israel’s most solemn days of the year, came in a deeply personal context as well. On Tuesday, his family received a letter with a live bullet and a death threat. Israeli authorities tightened security around the premier and his family and were investigating.
“My brothers and sisters, we cannot, we simply cannot allow the same dangerous gene of factionalism dismantle Israel from within,” Bennett said.
The siren also heralds the start of the main daytime ceremonies for the somber day that began the night before with an official opening event at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
Ceremonies are also held in schools, public institutions, and army bases. At 11 a.m. the “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony begins at the Knesset, an official annual event during which lawmakers read out the names of Holocaust victims.
Known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period.
In Israel, it is a national memorial day. The first official commemorations took place in 1951, and the observance of the day was anchored in a law passed by the Knesset in 1959. It is held on the 27th of Nisan (which falls in April or May), unless the 27th would be adjacent to the Jewish Sabbath, in which case the date is shifted by a day.
The Holocaust, known to Jews as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.
Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps; and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.
