Yom Hashoah marked in Israel, Poland, US

Israelis on Monday evening marked the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, coming together to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, despite deep societal divisions over the government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary.

At the main ceremony held at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, President Isaac Herzog noted the internal tensions, urging Israelis to set them aside for the commemorations and other upcoming national holidays.

“This year is no ordinary year. And this memorial day is like no other. This year, feelings are rough and shoulders are hunched, as if to attest to the weight of the discord bearing down on us,” he said. “Let us leave these sacred days, which begin tonight and end on Independence Day, above all dispute; let us all come together, as always, in partnership, in grief, in remembrance.”

Herzog recalled the stories of two of the 86 Jews killed at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp, on French soil. Their bodies were later sent to be exhibited in a planned “museum of skulls and skeletons of an extinct race”, which Herzog described as a “museum of horrors that the Nazi beast planned”.

“A collection of limbs belonging to our brothers and sisters, whose bodies were cut open, chopped up, and shoved into test tubes and glass bottles to be displayed and catalogued in an orderly fashion,” Herzog said.

The plan, he said, “reflected how, with blood-curdling cruelty, the Nazis were also thinking about the day after. The day when no living Jew would remain anywhere on Earth”.

“It was the finale of the Final Solution,” he said.

Herzog ended his remarks with an appeal to unity, saying Israel’s 75-year history showed “you will not defeat us”.

“We are one people, and one people we shall remain, brought together not only by a painful history but also by our shared, hope-filled future and fate,” he said.

Speaking after Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged national unity and likened today’s Iran to Nazi Germany as the current entity threatening the Jewish people, reprising a theme from his previous Yom Hashoah speeches.

Netanyahu hailed the “unique victory of the Jewish people” in the aftermath of the Holocaust, reflected in the forming of families by survivors, their coming to Israel, and never forgetting Jerusalem as a national symbol.

“The peak of the victory is the independence of the State of Israel,” he said.

On Tuesday, a siren sounded at 10am, bringing Israel to a standstill. Pedestrians stood in place, buses stopped, and cars pulled over, their drivers standing on the roads with their heads bowed.

In Poland, 40 Holocaust survivors, alongside more than 13,000 participants from 25 countries, took part in the 35th March of the Living from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This year’s march included a bipartisan US delegation led by US ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides and his predecessor, ambassador David Friedman.

An Australian delegation also participated with members of the Jewish community, along with Olympian Ian Thorpe, journalist Nick McKenzie and other public figures.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden issued a proclamation to mark the day, noting the horrors of the Nazi genocide as a “dark chapter of our history”. The proclamation declared April 15-23 a week of remembrance in the United States for the victims of the Holocaust.

Biden recalled his visit last year to Yad Vashem, where he met with two Holocaust survivors, highlighting the importance of listening to the stories of those who survived while they are still here to tell them.

“We remember the cries for help that went unanswered and the bright futures cut short. We must never look away from the truth of what happened,” he said. “The rite of remembrance becomes more urgent with each passing year, as fewer survivors remain to share their stories and open our eyes to the harms of unchecked hatred.”

Biden also addressed the rising antisemitism in the US. “Hatred never truly goes away. It only hides – lurking until it is given the oxygen to emerge again. We have seen this hard truth across our country, from swastikas on cars and antisemitic banners on bridges to attacks against Jewish people at schools and synagogues and outright Holocaust denialism,” his statement read.

“The venom and violence of antisemitism goes against all the values we stand for as Americans. And it is a stark reminder – as my dear friend Elie Wiesel once said – that ‘Indifference is always the friend of the enemy.'”

Meanwhile, as Israeli marked a previous attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, Iran’s President threatened on Tuesday to flatten Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The comments by Ebrahim Raisi came as the country marked its annual Army Day with fighter jets and helicopters flying overhead in Tehran, and Iranian submarines sailing across its waters during a ceremony carried live by state television.

Speaking at the ceremony, Raisi said, “Enemies, particularly the Zionist regime, has received the message that any tiny action against [our] country will prompt a harsh answer from the armed forces, which will accompany the destruction of Haifa and Tel Aviv.”

Israel is suspected of carrying out a series of attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear and military sites since the collapse of its deal with world powers.

Times of Israel, Agencies