7th Battalion The Cameronians Multiple Sclerosis Research Initiative

The twenty-seventh day of Nissan in the Jewish calendar (April 18 in 2004) is Yom Ha’shoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is the day set aside by the government of Israel to commemorate the Holocaust. The original Yom Ha'Shoah was called "Yom Ha’shoah u-G'vurah," "Day of Destruction and Strength." The common definition of the Hebrew word shoah is “whirlwind” but since World War II it has become the Israeli term for the Nazi perpetrated genocide commonly referred to as the Holocaust.

Yom Ha’shoah is a relatively new holiday so there are many questions and issues remaining in framing appropriate observances for the day. There also seems to be some question as to how the date was selected. The Knesset – the Israeli parliament – selected the date in part to remember the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began during the first day of Pesach or Passover (April 19, 1943) and was said to have ended on the 27th of Nissan. In reality, some resistance continued for several weeks. It appears that the date was also chosen to fall between Passover and the Israeli Independence Day (May 14, 1948), both of which are important holidays that symbolise Jewish freedom.

It is likely that the Israelis believed that holding a memorial during the joyous holiday of Passover would diminish that observance and so the later date was selected. In selecting this date, the Israeli leaders also wanted to link the events of the Holocaust to the hopeful event of the founding of the State of Israel, which is commemorated a week later on Yom ha-Atzmaut. The two chapters in Jewish history are clearly connected historically and contain both incredible sorrow and great joy, destruction and rebuilding.

Some Orthodox Jews remain concerned that Nissan, the month of traditional joy, was selected for this observance. Others believe that selecting a date memorialising primarily the resistance downplays the meaning of the slaughter of millions. Some Jewish leaders have suggested that the Holocaust should have a devoted Shabbat, or should be remembered with liturgy on every Shabbat. Others recommend including this observance on Tisha b'Av, which commemorates the destruction of both temples and other tragic events.

The Holocaust is a part of Jewish history that is not yet "ritualised," and an appropriate and complete way to remember it is difficult for many to imagine. Some observances for Yom Ha’shoah are suggested in American prayer books, with readings and recommended ways to incorporate them. However, there is no official version. Some rabbis have suggested that observants read selected Psalms, a traditional liturgy for mourning, or the Book of Job, together with modern readings. Several leaders suggest that a fast would be appropriate. Others recommend that each person learn and talk about one person who was murdered. One common practice is to silently light a candle at home, memorialising the victims and honouring the survivors. Many times, survivors are featured guest speakers who tell their stories about the Holocaust at public observances.

While Yom Ha’shoah is a remembrance of the Jewish Holocaust that occurred during World War II, the date can serve as a day to remember all the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing. While it is uncommon for students to learn much more than the basic facts of the Jewish Holocaust, it is common for them to learn nothing of other genocide. Yet genocide has occurred in the 20th Century. The truth is that the 6 million Jews who were killed by the Nazi regime were only a portion of those who died as a result of genocide during World War II.

The first significant genocide of the 20th century was directed against the Armenian residents of Asia Minor by the Turkish government. This deliberate slaughter began on April 24, 1915, under the cover of World War I. April 24 is still commemorated by Armenians around the world as Martyrs' Day. As in most genocide, the numbers killed are uncertain. The lowest estimate is 800,000 and the highest more than two million. While the Turkish government continues to deny that the Armenian Holocaust ever occurred, outsiders have carefully documented what happened through the firsthand reports of some of the survivors. It is considered to be the first systematic, widespread attempt at the execution of an entire race through "modern" means. It was a precursor and blueprint for similar ideologies in the future, such as the Nazi Holocaust. What makes the Armenian Genocide unique among 20th century genocide is that for the most part it has to this day gone ignored and unrecognised.

While the primary goal of the Nazi Holocaust was the extermination of all the Jews in Europe, they were not the only ones. Gypsies, Slavs, and homosexuals were also singled out. Some estimates state that up to 16 million non-combatant Poles and Russians were killed between 1941 and 1945. This includes between two and four million Soviet Prisoners of War. The Nazis also focused their attention on the Roma – commonly known as the Gypsies. An estimated 200,000 to one million Roma were systematically murdered in Europe before and during World War II. Approximately 50,000 to 200,000 homosexuals, as well as upwards of 275,000 handicapped and mentally retarded people were also killed in the name of racial purity and strength. The grand total of victims of Nazi genocide may be as high as 23 million.

Hitler was not the only leader who was killing millions of innocent people during the 1930s and 1940s. Both Josef Stalin in the U.S.S.R. and Mao Zedong in China both appear to have excelled and in some respects actually surpassed Hitler in the number of deaths each was responsible for. Of course both Stalin and Mao were in power for much longer periods of time. It is estimated that the Soviet Gulag State under Stalin put to death nearly 62 million individuals between the years 1917 and 1953. These were mostly individuals who disagreed with the communist state, though part of the total includes 2.5 million Poles executed in an attempt to maintain Soviet control over Poland. Mao appears to have matched Stalin’s numbers. Between the years 1945 and 1976 Mao and his communist regime oversaw the death of between 44 and 72 million people, both ethnic Chinese as well as large percentages of all the ethnic minorities within China and on its borders. The largest portion of deaths was due to the starvation that ensued from the “Great Leap Forward” – the restructuring of the Chinese economy between the years 1958 to 1960. The forced movement of hundreds of millions of people to agricultural camps was probably the largest human disaster in history. Upward to 40 million Chinese died in those two years. Mao also executed approximately four million in various purges and allowed 20 million to die in forced labour camps. Between 1949 and 1969 China perpetrated the destruction of Tibet's culture and oppression of its people. 1.2 million Tibetans, one-fifth of the country's population, died as a result of China's policies; many more languished in prisons and labour camps; and more than 6000 monasteries, temples and other cultural and historic buildings were destroyed and their contents pillaged.

During World War II, the Japanese reportedly exterminated between two and six million people - mostly Chinese, including 300,000 from the city of Nanking.

Also during World War II, about 100,000 ethnic Hungarians became the victims of an angry and barbaric Romanian retaliation. In the fall of 1944, when the Romanians returned to Northern Transylvania behind the advancing Russian army, another 100,000 Hungarians were exterminated. Between 1966 and 1985 another 200,000 ethnic Hungarians died as a result of ethnic cleansing.

After the Indochina war was over in 1975, Cambodia was taken over by communist leader Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge army. Over the next four years, in what was called an economic revitalisation, from one to three million people in the country were purposely put to death by the new government.

Since 1975, and this still going on today, the Communist Lao government has killed more than 300,000 people of Laos. Foreign policy makers and officials of the U.S. Department of State recognised the genocide in Cambodia. They have yet to officially recognise the devastation in Laos.

In the 1990s Serbian forces trying to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina after the break-up of Yugoslavia undertook a policy of “ethnic cleansing.” The violence was aimed primarily at Muslims, thousands of whom fled the country, while uncounted thousands who remained were tortured, raped, and killed. Croat troops also forced Muslims out of parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is still unclear as to how many thousands of individuals were killed in this conflict but early reports have suggested a total close to 200,000.

Within a period of three months in 1994, an estimated five to eight hundred thousand people were killed by Hutus as a result of civil war and genocide in Rwanda. Large numbers of the Tutsi minority were physically and psychologically afflicted for life through maiming, rape and other trauma; over two million people, both Hutu and Tutsi, fled to neighbouring countries and maybe half as many became internally displaced within Rwanda. The Tutsi made up about nine percent of the population of pre-war Rwanda for a total of nearly one million. Nearly eighty percent of them were killed in that three-month period and another five percent died as a result of disease and starvation afterwards.

The other group of people that can be remembered on Yom Ha’shoah are the individuals known as the Righteous Among the Nations – a group of individuals across Europe who helped the Jews escape the Nazi death camps. These individuals risked their own freedom and lives in order to hide Jewish families, acted as foster families to Jewish children, employed Jews to keep them housed and fed, smuggled them out of dangerous areas to other countries, and more. The actions of these men and women demonstrate the compassion, courage, and morality that were still present during the dark years of World War II.

The Righteous Among the Nations project at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem lists over 17,000 individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during WWII.

Oskar Schindler is the most widely known. Schindler "adopted" close to 900 Jews who worked in his factory in order to keep them from being sent to the concentration camps. He transferred his factory to a camp when his workers were deported. In all he saved 1,200 Jews.

Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara, a Japanese consul in the Soviet Union provided 2,500 transit visas to help Jews escape the approaching Nazis despite official refusal by the Japanese Government. "I may have disobeyed my government, but if I didn't, I would be disobeying God." Upon his return to Japan, he was dismissed from the Japanese Foreign Service and had to do odd jobs to make a living.

Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish businessman and diplomat. He convinced the Swedish government to send him to Hungary, where he set up "protected houses" flying Swedish flags to shelter thousands of Jews. "I'd never be able to go back to Stockholm without knowing inside myself I'd done all a man could do to save as many Jews as possible." Wallenberg was arrested by Soviet troops when they entered Budapest, and it is believed that he died in a Moscow prison.

The N.V. Group in the Netherlands smuggled Jewish children out of a holding camp and found hiding places for them throughout the country. They managed to save over 200 children, although the group's organisers paid with their own lives.

While it is important on Yom Ha’shoah to remember the people who died during the Holocaust as well as those who died in all the other genocide of the twentieth century, it is vital to remember those individuals and organisations who fought to end the killings. Ultimately, Yom Ha’shoah is a day of hope – a day where all people can dream of a time when the cry “never again” is heard and heeded in every nation

In Israel, the Knesset made Yom Hashoah a national public holiday in 1959 and in 1961 a law was passed that closed all public entertainment on Yom Hashoah. At ten in the morning, a siren is sounded where everyone stops what they are doing, pull over in their cars, and stand in remembrance.

Yom Ha’shoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day