Trutharchivist

So, tomorrow's Yom HaShoah, the Israeli Holocaust memorial day. I'm writing this as a continuation to my SU about Pesach, even though this is actually a national day, and not a religious one.

I shouldn't have to remind anyone what the Holocaust was. Just for the record I'll say it anyway: an organised genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime during WW2, during which 6 million Jews - approximately a third of the entire Jewish population worldwide at the time. 

My family is relatively lucky. On my mother's side, most of my great-grandparents were already in Israel when the war started. My maternal grandfather's mother went out of Europe in the nick of time. My mother's maternal grandfather was the only one from that side to have been to the camps.

On my father's side we're French Jews; some ran away to Switzerland, some hid in the rural areas of France. My paternal grandfather's father served at the army at the time - he was at the Maginot line. Guess where he ended up? As a prisoner of war, though, he got better conditions than the Eastern Jews.

All of my great grandparents had relatives who died in the Holocaust, though. Siblings. Parents. I could even tell a story or two about how my great-great-greatuncles and aunts died, and maybe I'll do that later. Right now, though, I want to write about the general history of the day. Why is the Israeli Holocaust memorial day tomorrow, instead of closer to D-day, or the day the extermination camps were destroyed? What happened during this fateful day, the 27th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar?

Well, nothing to do with the Holocaust. Apparently, it was used as a memorial day for casualties during the Arab revolt, two years before the World War even started.

Still, there is a reason for it to be at this time of year beyond an existing memorial day. The reason is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

You see, at the time - the first few years of the state of Israel - the Israeli Jews had a perception that Jews should fight back when oppressed. They kind of looked down on those who survived because they didn't fight back - seeing them as "exilist Jews", so to speak. So the memorial day was dedicated to the brave heroes who fought back - and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the biggest Jewish revolt against the Nazis. Of course, the Nazis destroyed the Ghetto and killed most of its population afterwards, but it hit them hard.

I'm never going to be able to tell the actual full story, so short version: for a long time, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were sent away to Extermination camps. That was standard at that period - every now and then there would be a round of picking people to send. But the Jews at the Ghetto didn't know they were sent to die - which is why they didn't revolt at first. They thought it will heighten their probability of death.

But then, a woman who was rescued from an extermination camp came and told them the truth. That convinced them to get up and fight. There were a couple of underground organizations that had fighters and weaponry. And so, next time the Nazis came to pick who to send, they revolted. They successfully got the Nazis away from the Ghetto and secured its grounds. The Nazis came again the day before Pesach and failed to take the camp. But after that victory cost a bit to much to the Nazis... Well...

They sent a larger power and destroyed the revolt, killing all the Jews who stayed at the Ghetto. They burned the houses and destroyed the synagogue, and if some of the none warriors stayed alive after that, this was soon remedied. 

So, not so successful. But they went down fighting, and took many SS soldiers with them. And that was the important point in the eyes of Israel's leaders back then. There was only one problem, though: the day the uprising supposedly started, the 14th of Nissan, wasn't really fitting for a memorial day, being the day before Pesach. Even though the leadership of Israel was mostly secular, they didn't think it'll go well. So instead, they stuck to an existing memorial day at the same month. Apparently so, because I honestly never heard of that before. I just found it on Wikipedia. The reasoning I heard for it was far more contrived, though, so I'll leave you with that reasoning and move on to the next topic.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel didn't like the idea, though. You see, according to the Halakhah, one isn't supposed to mourn during Nissan. I mean, if a relative of his dies or something he can mourn, but public mourning is more problematic. And this is why next week you'll hear me talk about religious repercussions of the Israeli Independence Day, but this week I'm not talking about that. It's because it doesn't really have any and shouldn't have any. Instead, the CRI decided that the fast at the 10th of Tevet will be declared the "general Kaddish day". What it means is that: when a person dies, his relatives say the mourner Kaddish on his grave, every year, at his date of death. But what if you have no idea when your relative died, or where he's buried? Well, the latter isn't that much of a problem (you can say the Kaddish in every synagogue, as long as you have ten people with you), but the solution to the former is this: the general Kaddish day, when you say Kaddish on your loved ones if you don't know their death's date. It kind of works as a religious stand in to the Holocaust memorial day.

Hope that was informative and interesting! I'm going to keep this up with even relatively minor Jewish dates and holidays, as much as I can. If someone prefers otherwise - they may speak up. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day.