Commemorated both in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world, this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day started with a ceremony on Wednesday evening at Yad Vashem, the world’s most well-known Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
The ceremony took place amid the ongoing war in Gaza, and with the political situation in Israel threatening to escalate into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Israeli officials, ambassadors and Holocaust survivors were in attendance.
The rest of the world observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the date when the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army. But Israel and the Jewish diaspora have their own memorial day on the Hebrew date of Nissan 27, a date chosen due to its close proximity to the beginning of the monthlong Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943.
Netanyahu: Hamas wants to ‘destroy all the Jews’
Similar to last year’s event, the official ceremony and speeches on Wednesday evening centered on the terrorist attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 which killed some 1,200 people, and the ensuing war in Gaza launched by Israel. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel, Germany, the US and other states.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrived late to the ceremony due to what his office said was a security incident, once again echoed his comparison of Hamas members to “Nazis, like Hitler,” who were responsible for the deaths of 6 million European Jews during World War II.
“They want to kill, to destroy all the Jews,” said Netanyahu. “They openly declare their intent to destroy the Jewish state, and that will not happen.”
Yad Vashem and its head, Dani Dayan, have repeatedly called for refraining from comparing the October 7 terrorist attacks to the Holocaust, in an effort not to marginalize both events.
Survivor calls for hostages’ return
Some of the hostages released from Hamas captivity in Gaza were also in attendance as this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day events got underway.
Other former hostages, as well as the families of the Israelis currently held in Gaza, traveled to Poland to take part in the March of the Living, the annual event to commemorate the death marches from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
During the official ceremony in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, Tunisia-born survivor Gad Fartouk defied protocol by shouting that the hostages should return home while lighting one of six torches in memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Fartouk, 93, the first Holocaust survivor of North African descent to light a memorial torch during the official ceremony, told Israeli outlet Ynet he felt it was “empty” not to mention the 59 hostages — some 20 of them believed to still be alive — still held by Hamas in Gaza.
