Dateline Jerusalem — Israel literally came to a standstill this week on Holocaust Memorial Day, known as Yom HaShoah and Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day.

“Yom” in Hebrew means “day” and “HaShoah” means “The Catastrophe.”

At 10 a.m., a loud air raid siren sounded throughout the country for a full two minutes, bringing cars, buses, trains, and pedestrians to a halt.  People in businesses stopped all activity.  As the siren blared on this 74th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, people exited their vehicles, silently stood at attention, bowed their heads in devotion and prayer, and gave respect to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is in January.  But Israel observes Holocaust Memorial Day in May, on the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.  Unlike most of European Jewry who were likened to sheep going to slaughter, a few Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rose up and fought their oppressors.  Yet a friend of mine in her 90s, an Auschwitz death camp survivor with tattooed numbers on her arm still visible today, says she and most concentration camp survivors observe Holocaust Memorial Day on the day they arrived at the concentration camps.

Television in Israel was limited to news, Holocaust survivors telling their stories, World War II movies and events commemorating the holiday.  Pubs, movie theatres and places of entertainment were closed.  There was a torch ceremony in which six Holocaust survivors each carried a brass flame-lit torch, the mourner’s Kaddish prayer was recited, the haunting El Maleh Rachamim prayer for the souls of those who died in the Holocaust was sung.

At the end of the ceremony the entire audience stood up to sing HaTikvah.

HaTikvah, which means The Hope, is the national anthem of Israel. Each of the six survivors chosen to light the torches represented one million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, 1.2 million of them being children. At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem , there was a wreath-laying ceremony.

Because Israel’s very existence is threatened by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Iran, Isis, Hezbollah and numerous others, Israelis come together as a nation and as a people.

‘We Will Fight All the Way’

Like those in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, they vow not to go to slaughter without putting up a fight.  Although the U.S. claims it will help Israel, should it be attacked, I am reminded of what Golda Meir told the U.S. president during her time as Prime Minister of Israel.

“By the time you honor your commitment,” she said, “we will be dead.”

Therefore, Israelis can only rely upon themselves to prevent annihilation.

The sayings “Never again!” and “We must never forget” are almost meaningless today.

Anti-Semitism is as rampant now as it was in 1930s’ pre-Nazi Europe. There is a rise in assaults against Jews throughout the world and an increase in anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. college campuses. Here in Tel Aviv this week an Arab terrorist stabbed four people.  He was given an entry permit into Israel secured by the far-left NGO Natural Peace Tour Organization which brings Palestinian Authority residents into Israel for “peace tours,” vacations and meeting with Israeli youths.  Palestinian media referred to it as an attack on “settlers” in “occupied Palestine.” Tel Aviv is not a “settlement”, nor is it in disputed territory.  But what the E.U., Europe, U.S., the U.N. and leftist organizations fail to understand is that to the Palestinians, all Israelis are settlers. All Israel is “occupied Palestine.”

Therefore, giving up the Golan, Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), and East Jerusalem to appease the Palestinians and to create a Palestinian state is essentially a fruitless exercise.

Palestinians will not be satisfied until Israel is free of Jews and Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel is under Palestinian control.

There is a dangerous concerted effort to erase Jewish history, the thousands of years of Jewish connection to Jerusalem and Jewish holy sites, and to Israel itself.

Dastardly Accusation

Hamas teaches its people that the Holocaust was a Jewish conspiracy to do away with invalid Jews so that only the strong would come to Israel to take over Arab lands.

Some people claim there was never a Holocaust. Schools throughout the world are told they cannot teach this part of history because it is offensive to Muslims who deny it ever happened.  Some European countries have laws against ritual kosher slaughter and circumcision. There is even a rise in neo-Nazi factions winning votes in Europe.  What better way to destroy the Jewish people than to erase their history, their identity, and their national sovereignty.

Fewer than 150,000 Holocaust survivors are in their late 70s, 80s, 90s.  The majority of those who survived the concentration camps, work camps and death camps, the forced marches, the mass shootings, the gas chambers and ovens, the cruel medical experiments, and a myriad of other atrocities, made their way to Israel.

Who will remember what happened during the Holocaust when these survivors pass away and all evidence of the Holocaust is erased from history?

Even today when the survivors are still around, the world seems to have forgotten the genocide of European Jewry since it appears history is repeating itself.

The U.S. and Allied countries knew of the concentration camps, work camps, and death camps. They ignored the pleas of Jewish organizations. Ships of Jewish refugees were turned back from the shores of the U.S. and other countries, their passengers sent back to Europe to be slaughtered.

How many lives could have been saved if they had acted?  One of my friends lost 78 members of her family.  Another never knew her siblings. Her parents lost their former spouses and children in the Holocaust.   I once worked with a guy who bragged about his relatives making lampshades of Jewish skin during the Holocaust.  He did not know I was Jewish at the time. He apologized when I said my relatives were the lampshades.  It was a stark reminder that even in this day there is hatred for Jews.

Yom HaShoah is a day to remember and remind us not to allow history to repeat itself.

May there never be another Holocaust.

May the people in Israel live here peacefully and safely.

May those of you in the Diaspora have a home in Israel should, G-d forbid, you need a place to go.  “Am Yisroel Chai”… “the people of Israel live.”

L’hitraot.  Shachar