Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day

Events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day began on Wednesday evening at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Yom Hashoah, or by its full name Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah, is the Hebrew name for Holocaust (Shoah) Memorial Day, literally translated as ‘Day of the Holocaust and the Heroism’.

The date is always held on the 27th day of the month of Nissan on the Hebrew calendar – one week after the end of Pesach (Passover) and one week before Yom Hazikaron, the memorial day for Israel’s fallen soldiers.

Synagogues hold memorial services across the globe, where six candles are lit by families of the dead – one for each of the six million victims – and the names of those who died are read out. 

The sound of a siren is blasted across Israel, stopping traffic and pedestrians in their tracks for a two-minute silence.

This usually happens twice during Yom HaShoah – once at 11am and once at sunset – a way of commemorating the dead established in the 1960s.