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International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the HolocaustBeth Hatefutsoth – The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora tells the story of the Jewish People during more than 2,500 years of life in the Diaspora. The history of the Jewish people, perhaps more than any other, has been marked many times in the past by attacks against individuals and groups of all ages and walks of life in almost all Jewish communities. Anti-Jewish hatred and racist antisemitism have been a constant element in the life of the Jewish people around the world. Often entire communities have been destroyed either by physical destruction or by expulsion, forced conversions and other means. The attacks against Jewish communities during the Crusades and those that were caused by anti-Jewish accusations at the time of the Black Death, the expulsions of the Jews from England, France, Spain, Hungary, Yemen and other countries at different periods of history, the widespread attacks on Jewish communities in the Kingdom of Poland during the Ukrainian Revolt of 1648-49, the frequent pogroms against Jewish communities in the Pale of Settlement in Czarist Russia and later during the Russian Civil War in the early 20th century, to mention but a few in a long catalog of suffering and persecution, during the course of which many hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews fell victim.
But nothing in this history of persecution reached the dimensions of the Nazi plan to exterminate all of the Jewish people. During its 12 years in power, the Nazi regime in Germany and in all the territories in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East that either were conquered by Germany during World War II or controlled by its allies, about eight million Jews suffered from a brutal policy aimed at the total destruction of the Jewish people. Of them, six million Jews, comprising more than half of the Jews of Europe, and one third of the Jewish population of the world, were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators from many other nations. The Holocaust of the Jewish people had no precedent in history of mankind as a premeditated and systematic attempt to massacre an entire ethnic group so as to implement a racist and murderous ideology. The enormous scope of the Holocaust left a long-lasting wound in the body of the Jewish people. It brought about the end of Jewish life in entire regions that had had Jewish communities for centuries, with many hundreds of thousands of families that lost most, if not all, of their members, hundreds of thousands of survivors whose lives have been affected for ever, and many other hundreds of thousands who were forced to flee and seek refuge in other countries and as a result lost all their possessions. Even now, more than sixty years after the end of the Holocaust, the Jewish population of the world is well below its size in 1939, on the eve of World War II.
In October 2005 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution recognizing January 27, the day of liberation by the Soviet Army of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious Nazi concentration and extermination camp and the site of the greatest crime against humanity in the history of mankind, as the Annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It is estimated that about one and a half million people from all German occupied territories, the vast majority of them Jewish children, women and men of all ages and walks of life were murdered at the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Holocaust. The United Nations resolution stresses the need to develop educational programs to instill the memory of the tragedy in future generations to prevent genocide from occurring again. The resolution rejects any form of denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, and condemns “without reserve” all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, whenever they occur. The Holocaust Remembrance Day is being commemorated on January 27 in Germany, England, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Greece, Russia, Estonia, Romania, and the Czech Republic. The Council of Europe also sponsors a project for schools in each of its 48 member states to choose the day on which they wish to memorialize the Holocaust.
In Israel and in Jewish communities in the Diaspora the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah ve Hagvura, in Hebrew), a national day of commemoration, is commemorated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on Nissan 27th. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, was established by the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in 1953 and has since been the main institution in Israel dedicated to the preservation of the memory of the six million victims. Other Israeli institutions and museums dealing with the Holocaust include the Ghetto Fighters' Museum located in Kibbutz Lohamey Haghettaot, Yad Mordechai Museum in Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, and Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak. Outside Israel many new institutions and museums dedicated to the study of the Holocaust have been established during the 1990's and early 2000s, of them the greatest impact was made by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau were taken by Dr. Nancy Lee Segal of USA on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, January 27th, 1985 HFG LinksSearch the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names – Yad Vashem Submit Pages of Testimony to the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names – Yad Vashem Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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