Remembrance is an important theme in the Jewish faith, and on April 28, Jewish people globally will come together for Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“We do this so that we never forget, so that something like this never happens again,” said Rabbi David Sirull, the spiritual leader of Augusta’s Adas Yeshurun Synagogue, who has been remotely studying the Holocaust through Yeshiva University in New York for several years.
Yom Hashoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day will be observed locally at 7 p.m. April 28 at the former Jewish Community Center on Weinberger Way, Evans.
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The Hebrew word for remember is “zachor,” and it’s used nearly 200 times in the Hebrew Bible, according to Yosef Haim Yerusalmi’s book “Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory.”
God commands the Jewish people to remember many things such as the Sabbath, the Passover and His covenant. Yom Hashoah, which has multiple spellings, remembers a dark time in Jewish history.
Yom Hashoah is observed on the 27th day of the Jewish month of Nisan — one week after the end of Passover. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
In 1939, nearly 500,000 people, one-third of the population of Warsaw, Poland were Jewish. After the Nazis invaded the country, they segregated all the Jewish citizens into one portion of the city. The uprising began April 19, 1943 as Polish Jews resisted the deportations from Warsaw to the Treblinka concentration camp. The Nazis crushed the effort on May 16, 1943, according to brittanica.com.
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It was established as a holiday in Israel in 1959.
“They sound a siren at 10 o’clock,” said Sirull of the Israeli observance.
Everything comes to a standstill for the next two minutes, he said. People will even stop their cars and get out of them on the highway as the siren blare.
“It’s also been our tradition to read the names of the survivors,” Sirull said.
In addition to reading names, six candles are lit — in honor of the six million Jewish people who died during the Holocaust, he said.
The local observance will be in person, and it will also be streamed on the Augusta Jewish Museum YouTube channel.
The program will include a presentation by George David and music by the John S. Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School Quartet.
Charmain Z. Brackett is the managing editor of The Augusta Press. Reach her at charmain@theaugustapress.com
