Holocaust Remembrance Day
Daily News Article — Posted on April 15, 2026
(Times of Israel) — A two-minute memorial siren sounded throughout Israel at 10 a.m. Tuesday, bringing the country to a standstill as it marked Holocaust Remembrance Day [Yom Hashoah] with various state ceremonies and events, in the shadow of the ongoing war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fragile ceasefire with Iran.
As is customary on Israel’s remembrance days, drivers stood by halted cars along highways and pedestrians came to a standstill, remaining silent and unmoving until the siren…died away.
After the siren sounded, the main state ceremony was held at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem museum, attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, other dignitaries, and several Holocaust survivors.
The ceremony took place without an audience, and several portable bomb shelters were placed nearby in case of an incoming missile or rocket alarm.
However, no sirens — apart from the memorial siren — sounded during the event, and the ceremony went ahead as planned.
Netanyahu, Herzog and the other senior officials present laid wreaths upon memorial posts, in honor of the six million Jews who were killed by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II.
The previous evening, Israel ushered in the somber day with a pre-recorded ceremony from Yad Vashem, during which Netanyahu castigated Europe for being “afflicted by deep moral weakness,” saying that Israel is now defending the continent, “which has forgotten so much since the Holocaust.”
He accused Europe of “losing control of its identity, of its values, of its responsibility to defend civilization against barbarism.” …
Meanwhile in Poland, thousands of people from around the world, including some 50 Holocaust survivors and their families, gathered Tuesday afternoon at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp for the 38th annual March of the Living.
Though the planned 1,500-strong Israeli delegation was forced to cancel due to the war with Iran, a dozen survivors from the Jewish state nevertheless were able to make it to Poland.
During the yearly event, participants silently march the 3-kilometer (1.8-mile) distance between the former Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Some 7,000 people from around the world were expected to take part in the march, including survivors of antisemitic attacks in the US, Europe and Australia, who were set to take part in a central torch-lighting ceremony after the march concluded. …
While Monday’s and Tuesday’s main state ceremonies in Israel were either pre-recorded or took place without audiences, local ceremonies were still held across the country, alongside the many small living-room gatherings held each year in which Holocaust survivors are invited to tell their story to the public.
The day, marked on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, is separate from International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on January 27, commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
At the start of 2026, there were 111,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). All survivors are at least 80 years old, and 28 percent of them are over 90, the CBS said, based on data from the Holocaust Survivors’ Authority, a government agency that sits under the Prime Minister’s Office.
In January 2025, the authority said there were 123,000 survivors living in Israel.
Dwindling numbers of living eyewitnesses to the Nazi genocide during World War II mean it will be more difficult to transmit the lessons of the Holocaust to the next generation, Holocaust educators say.
Published at Times of Israel on April 14. Reprinted here for educational purposes only. May not be reproduced on other websites without permission.
Questions
1. a) What is Yom HaShoah? (When is it? What is its purpose? Where is it observed?)
b) How does International Holocaust Remembrance Day differ?
2. List the events that take place in Israel each year on Yom HaShoah.
3. a) For how many minutes does Israel come to a standstill on Yom Hashoah?
b) Why do you think this an important part of Holocaust Remembrance Day?
4. a) How many Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis during WWII?
b) Look through some of the links under “Resources” below (links are below the video). Visit Yad Vashem’s testimonies page and youtube page and check out some of the survivors’ stories.
Why do you think it is vital for Holocaust Remembrance Day to be commemorated in the U.S. and around the world?
5. According to a survey conducted in 2020*, nearly two-thirds of Americans between 18 and 39 do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. Among millennials and Gen Z, 1 in 10 believes it was the Jews who caused the Holocaust. One in 4 said the Holocaust is a myth, and 1 in 8 said they have never heard of the Holocaust. (*survey conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany)
a) What should schools do to educate their students about the Holocaust?
b) Yom Hashoah 2026 is not a big news story in American news outlets. Why do you think this is so?
c) How should publishers and editors in every media organization fulfill their responsibility to make sure we never forget?
Background
Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) is is a national memorial day in Israel commemorating the approximately six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. It was inaugurated in 1953 and is held on the 27th of Nisan (April/May), unless the 27th would be adjacent to Shabbat, in which case the date is shifted by a day. It was held this year from sundown to sundown on April 13 to 14.
Places of entertainment are closed and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country. The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem and are broadcast live. Marking the start of the day - in the presence of the President of the State of Israel and the Prime Minister, dignitaries, survivors, children of survivors and their families, gather together with the general public to take part in the memorial ceremony at Yad Vashem in which six torches, representing the six million murdered Jews, are lit.
The following morning at 10 a.m., the ceremony at Yad Vashem begins with the sounding of a siren for two minutes throughout the entire country. For the duration of the siren, work is halted, people walking in the streets stop, cars pull off to the side of the road and everybody stands at silent attention in reverence to the victims of the Holocaust.
Afterward, the focus of the ceremony at Yad Vashem is the laying of wreaths at the foot of the six torches, by dignitaries and the representatives of survivor groups and institutions.
Yom HaShoah is also observed by many Jewish communities in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world.
The date relates both to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising which began 13 days earlier, and to the Israeli Independence Day which is eight days later.
NOTE: International Holocaust Remembrance Day was designated by a UN Resolution in 2005. The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year, during which the UN General Assembly marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.
This day is also a national event in the United Kingdom and in Italy.
Yad Vashem, located in Jerusalem, is the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, founded in 1953 to commemorate, document, research, and educate about the Holocaust. Meaning "a monument and a name" (derived from Isaiah 56:5), it serves as a memorial to victims and honors non-Jews who saved Jews, known as the Righteous Among the Nations.