Israel will remember the victims of the Holocaust on Monday and Tuesday with a series of events marking Yom Hashoah, the Israeli Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.

Similar to the now internationally recognised Holocaust Memorial Day, which is held on 27 January – the day the Auschwitz death camp was liberated, the Israeli day was also instituted by government.

Established by Israeli law in 1959 by then prime minister David Ben Gurion and president Yitzhok Ben Zvi, the day is always held a week and a day before Israel’s independence day – Yom Haatzmaut.

It also marks the period following the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, where hundreds of Jews who had been held captive in the walled section of the Polish capital attempted to fight back against the Nazis, who eventually killed nearly all of them.

Solemn ceremony

Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, is Israel’s national Holocaust memorial. It was established in 1953 by an act of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) which defined its function as follows: “To gather unto the homeland all commemorative material regarding members of the Jewish people who fell, fought and rebelled against the Nazi enemy and German satellites, to establish a memorial for them and for the communities organizations, and institutions that were destroyed because they were Jewish, and to perpetuate the memory of the Righteous Among the Nations.” The name Yad Vashem (lit, "a monument and a name"), comes from Isaiah 56:5: "I will give them, in my house and in my walls, a monument and a name, better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be effaced."

This year’s events, to be based around the theme “The Human Spirit in the Shadow of Death”, will begin with an opening ceremony to be held at 8pm Monday night at the Warsaw Ghetto Square in the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

The president of the State of Israel Moshe Katsav and acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will address the participants. Professor Szewach Weiss, Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, will kindle the Memorial Torch.

During the ceremony, six torches will be lit by Holocaust survivors, to pay tribute to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the second world war, and an official memorial service will be held, led by Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and his Ashkenazi counterpart Yona Metzger.

Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev, said: “It incumbent upon us as a society to raise the banner of Holocaust survivors, who fought for their lives in the shadow of death and became eye witnesses and activists, reminding us constantly of our obligation to preserve our own humanity.

“These survivors, who gave so much to the establishment and growth of the State of Israel, are our example and our model.”

On Tuesday the traditional siren will be sounded througout the country at 10.00am.

International events

Although Yom Hashoah is traditionally an Israeli day and many European nations mark Holocaust Memorial day in January, Jewish communities around Europe have also held services and event on this day.

The largest of these will be at the site of the Auschwitz camp in Poland where thousands of high-school children will come together for what is known as the March of the Living.

In an incredibly emotional experience, the youngsters will first march the three kilometeres from the Auschwitz concentration camp to Birkenau – the site of the more infamous death camp.

They will then retrace the steps of what has become known as the “March of Death,” the actual route which hundreds of thousands of our people were forced to take on their way to the gas chambers at Birkenau.

The March of the Living has, however, become a study in contrast, as the majority of participants will then travel from Poland to Israel where they will celebrate Yom Haatzmaut (Independence Day) and the establishment of a Jewish state with Israelis next week.