D’var Torah: Yom HaShoah then and now

Written by Rabbi Josh Levy — 17 April 2020

On 28 December 1949, the first Holocaust Remembrance Day took place in Israel.  In December.

A committee of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate had decided that the appropriate day to mourn for those killed in the Holocaust would be the tenth of Tevet –a day of mourning commemorating the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar.  As had been common practice throughout Jewish history, they chose to add their new mourning on to a pre-existing fast day.

In 1951, though, the Knesset decided that this should become a different kind of commemoration – a distinct national, rather than a religious memorial.  And they approved a new date, 27 Nisan.
The reason for this date above any other was that they wanted to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  They couldn’t choose the start date of the uprising – erev Pesach was not a possible day for mourning – so effectively chose the first date that was far enough away from Pesach.

For a while, two Holocaust memorial days ran side by side, one religious, one national.  Until, in 1959, what we now know as Yom HaShoah was established in Israeli law, a date that came to be part of Jewish practice around the world.

In fact, not quite Yom HaShoah.  Rather, according to the law that established it, ‘Yom HaZikaron la’Shoah v’la’gvurah’ – ‘the day of remembrance for the Shoah and for heroism’.  Importantly for the then Israeli psyche, this was also to be a day to remember partisan activity, those who rose up.  Similarly, it is traditional in many communities to sing a partisan marching song, Zog nit Keynmol, on Yom HaShoah.

And not quite around the world.  Certainly not in all parts of the Jewish world.  For charedim, this date for Yom HaShoah remains incompatible with their understanding of the season – Nisan being the month of Pesach and thus for remembering the Exodus, as well as complicated by the counting of the Omer.  They continue to mourn on the tenth of Tevet and on Tisha b’Av in the summer

For us, in this country, the placing of Yom HaShoah on this date – controversial as it was at the time and distant to us as the Israeli logic might be – has an additional resonance.   The placing of Yom HaShoah just after Pesach, also ended up linking it with the liberation by British forces on 15 April 1945 of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

So, we bring to our marking of Yom HaShoah an additional layer of tribute – to those who liberated the camps and worked to look after those who survived.  This year, as we mark the 75th anniversary, we are especially aware of their service, and also of some of the resonances between their efforts and the work which many are doing on our behalf in these days.

At the memorial service for Brigadier Glynn Hughes who led their work, a prayer composed for the occasion was recited including these words:
“We remember with gratitude and affection the brave men who entered the camps to give succour and medical aid to the ailing, the weak, the starving and the tormented.  Heedless of the risk to their own life and of exposure to disease, they toiled endlessly to save the remnant of a tortured people”

The prayer, written at Hughes’ request by the Senior Jewish Chaplain with whom he had served, ended with the following words:  “In the fullness of time [may] men (it was 1974) learn to live together in amity, to unite in constructive living, to remove bitterness and enmity, and so hasten the day when in the words of the prophet ‘swords will be turned into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks’… ‘when the world will be perfected under the kingdom of almighty God and all children of flesh will call out in God’s name”

With these words from the second paragraph of the Aleinu, we turn to page 310 and rise together.