A picture is worth a thousand words: Yom Hashoah 2024 via Hillel Fuld Instagram
Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Shoah.
This year we did not need to much of an effort to remember the victims of the Shoah. The whole period felt all too close and personal in the shadow of the horrific massacre of Simchat Torah, 7th October 2023, in which 1,200 Israeli and foreign nationals were mutilated, raped, tortured, and murdered, and a further 250 were kidnapped by Hamas and their complicit Palestinian civilian helpers, which in turn set in motion the Swords of Iron war in which we are still engulfed.
In fact the theme of this year’s Yom Hashoah was set presciently already a year ago, focussing on destroyed communities:
Yad Vashem determined the central theme for this year’s Yom Hashoah Holocaust commemoration before the October 7 massacres, but there’s an eerie resonance between those atrocities and “A Lost World: The Destruction of Jewish Communities.”
Taking place under the cloud of seven months of war with Hamas in Gaza, the theme has built-in associations with several Gaza-area Israeli communities that were largely destroyed. During the unprecedented Hamas rampage, 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 253 people kidnapped into Gaza, igniting the current round of war.
“The whole subject matter of this year’s theme is very much reminiscent of October 7,” Yad Vashem spokesperson Simmy Allen told The Times of Israel.
You can watch the entire ceremony here:
The six torchlighters, representing the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Shoah, were: Michael Bar-On, Raisa Brodsky, Arie Eitani, Allegra Gutta, Pnina Hefer and Izi Kabilio. You can read more about them on the government website.
The six torchlighters for Yom Hashoah 2024
There has been much commentary about comparisons of 7th October to the Shoah. President Isaac Herzog in his address to the ceremony said that we must not make such comparisons, however terrible the massacre was. After telling the terrible tale of Holocaust survivor Naftali Furst, he recounted how Naftali’s granddaughter’s family and neighbours were slaughtered and abducted on October 7th 2023 in Kfar Aza. He then added:
Ten percent, a tenth of the small community of Kibbutz Kfar Azza were lost on that cursed Sabbath, and close to twenty beloved souls were abducted to the terror tunnels in Gaza, on the day when the most Jews were murdered and slaughtered in one day since the Holocaust.
Dear people of Israel, my sisters and brothers. Throughout the decades that have passed since the Holocaust, we assured time after time: “Never again,” and we swore that the Jewish people would never again stand defenseless and unprotected. And yet, despite all that, the horrors of the Holocaust shook us all during the October massacres, echoing in all our hearts.
To me as well, the descriptions of mothers silencing babies so they wouldn’t cry and give away their hiding place; of children torn from their parents; and of abominable murderers – who saw in the Nazis a model to emulate, and who, burnt, and butchered entire families – echoed the horrors among us. But especially on this day, I ask that we pay close attention to the words of Naftali Furst, who, after the massacre, said to his granddaughter Micah, and I quote: “This is similar, it’s terrifying, there are no words to describe this cruelty, but it’s not the same thing. It’s not a Holocaust. There won’t be a second Holocaust.”
Indeed – it’s not a Holocaust. It wasn’t a Holocaust – because the Holocaust was the deepest abyss in human history, in every measure. Never in the annals of human history has there been such a systematic and total murder, on such a massive scale – spanning countries and continents. Lasting for so long, like the Jewish Holocaust.
One out of every three Jews in the world was murdered by the Nazi extermination machine. In Auschwitz alone, the factory of death, the symbol of horror, about ten thousand Jews were murdered on average every day. But the magnitude of the Holocaust is not the sole reason.
October 7th was not a Holocaust because today we have the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces. Although the results of the tragedy and the shock still haunt us; we don’t forget that what our brothers and sisters who perished in the Holocaust could only dream of, only imagine: a country and an army of our own. An army that even now fights in a battle that has not yet ended – for our national home. The home of national independence.
I say this with complete and absolute conviction – despite the disaster and mourning that still afflicts us: nothing can destroy this home. This people, our people, who endured the most terrible Holocaust of all, and built for themselves sovereignty in their homeland two millennia after being exiled from it by force – nothing can erase them.
The educator Rabbi Hagai Lundin wrote a similar opinion in a Facebook post which was translated to a whatsapp group (via Suzanne):
October 7th is not the Holocaust not only in terms of the number of victims (by way of illustration, 43,000 Jews were killed on one day, 3 November 1943) but first and foremost, in terms of the national status of the Jewish people.
The Holocaust was the final nail in the coffin of the exile that lasted 2000 years, 2000 years in which the Jewish people were massacred, since they did not have a country, government or the power to defend.
October 7th is undoubtedly one of the darkest days in the history of the Jewish people, but it is on the historical continuum of our return to the land, a return in which there are also falls and disasters. October 7th is a dark window into the days of exile; 14 hours of darkness in which we tasted a bitter drop from the poisoned cup our grandparents drank on a daily basis. Fourteen hours later, and in fact already during them, the State of Israel recovered and fought back against its enemies.
So yes, the surprise was great and the blow hard and painful, but thank God there is a state, and there is an army, and there are heroic fighters who came and prevented a much bigger disaster.
Statements from the progressive line of thought such as “the State of Israel ended on October 7th”; “we are back in the days of the Holocaust”; “we have made no progress in the last 80 years” – are false and hollow. The State of Israel did not end on October 7th; we are not back in the days of the Holocaust; and certainly, the world and the Jewish people have made miraculous progress in the last 80 years.
We will painfully mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, and we will painfully mark the day of remembrance that will be established in memory of the tragedy that befell us this year – but we will not be ungrateful to God, blessed be He, Who is moving us forward generation to generation and from year to year.
The evil will pass
The good will prevail
With the help of God
Never again is now: Yom Hashoah 2024 Via Shosh Oz on Facebook
In 2023, France registered the highest increase in recorded antisemitic incidents of any country with reliable statistics, according to data released in a new report that warned that current trends could threaten the very “ability to lead Jewish lives in the West.”
Published Sunday by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League, the report showed a near-quadrupling of incidents in France, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 last year. It also highlighted antisemitism on US campuses, which the head of the ADL called the “most alarming” aspect of the surge of Jew-hatred in the United States.
…
In the United States, the tally more than doubled, from 3,697 incidents in 2022 to 7,523 last year, with 52% of the 2023 total occurring after October 7. In Canada, the increase was from 65 to 132; in the United Kingdom from 1,662 to 4,103; in Germany from 2,639 to 3,614, and in Italy from 241 to 454.
It is a very depressing picture all round. Who would have expected we would find ourselves in this situation in 2024?
As I have done in the past, I draw your attention to my Family History pages where I have recorded the history of my family during the Shoah, especially the murder of my mother’s three brothers, David, Elchanan and Uri Strauss HY’D, in Sobibor.
David, Herbert (Elchanan) and Uri Strauss HY’D who were murdered in Sobibor in 1943
Never forgive. Never forget. May the memory of the 6 million be for a blessing.
Anne's Opinions 
Thank you. And thank you for reminding us that although it felt like a Holocaust, 7.10 wasn’t one.It was terrible, it caused shock,anger grief which we all still suffer,but as you say,we do have a state,an army and we saw many many miracles on that day and every day since.So yes there are comparisons, but Thank G-d it’s not a Holocaust.
What scares me more,with all the antisemitism around the world, is that another Holocaust will occur.The various UN,EU agencies aren’t doing anything to stop this from happening. But this time,as we see in their universities,and towns,the difference will ve that after coming for the Jews,the violent Muslim mobs will go for anyone not Muslim.By then it’ll he too late for the world to wake up from its wokeness,from its liberalism.
Am Yisrael Chai
Yes you’re right, as the late lamented Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z’l and others have said, it may start with the Jews but it never ends with the Jews. In fact the Nazis started with the Jews and that was just the beginning.