Holocaust Remembrance Day

Yom HaShoah is the Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day falls on the 27th of Nisan. The Gregorian equivalent, though, corresponds to tomorrow: May 5th, 2016.

The Holocaust or Shoah, which means catastrophe or utter destruction in Hebrew, refers to the atrocities that were committed against the Jewish people during World War II.

The Holocaust, from the Greek word meaning sacrifice by fire, was initiated by the members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which seized power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis believed in a doctrine of racial superiority, centering around the idea that people of Northern European descent were somehow better than members of all other races – especially the Jews, who were "unworthy of life."

After taking power, the Nazis gradually restricted the rights of German Jewish citizens and encouraged their followers to commit acts of violence and destruction against Jews and their property. During World War II (1939-1945), the Nazis implemented their "final solution," which was a plan to concentrate and annihilate all European Jews.

Jews were first crammed together in ghettoes and slave-labor camps, where disease, brutality, and malnutrition ran rampant. Eventually, they were sent to death camps, where millions were murdered in special facilities designed to kill a tremendous number of people over a brief period of time.

In addition to the six million Jews who died - two-thirds of the European Jewish population – the Nazis also killed millions of others, including Roma (Gypsies) and Slavs, political and religious dissidents, the handicapped, and gays and lesbians.

Yom HaShoah is a memorial day for those who died in the Holocaust. In Israel, it starts at sundown in a state ceremony held in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Authority, in Jerusalem. Flags on public buildings are flown at half mast. At 10 AM, an air raid siren sounds throughout the country and Israelis are expected to observe two minutes of solemn reflection: