Remember Our History

[Tholian_Avenger]

[McAvoy]

What does that say?

[Mikey]

What does that say?

In transliteration, "Yom ha-Zikaron la-Shoah v'la-G'vurah." In translation, "Day of Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance." It is an artificial holiday created in 1953 by Ben-Gurion as a memorial of both the Holocaust victims and the Jewish resistance. It's a double-edged sword, IMHO - while all too often the world needs to be reminded to "never forget," Yom ha-Shoah (it's colloquial name) seems too often to be a reminder of how many Jews forget that there were 6-7 million non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It grates on me to no end when I hear someone talk about "the six million." There were close to 13 million victims of the Holocaust, and to disregard the lives of some of those victims merely because they weren't part of the single largest group of victims is tantamount to embracing the bigotry that started the mess in the first place. The "heroism" part also seems to be an excuse for many to forget that for every Jewish resistance fighter, there was also a Wallenberg.

This year, Yom ha-Shoah fell on April 19th; being marked on the Hebrew lunar calendar, the date fluctuates year to year on the Gregorian calendar.

[Tholian_Avenger]

Some 20 millions of Russians too.

[Mikey]

Some 20 millions of Russians too.

Of course; I wasn't referring to casualties of war or victims of any other "cleansing," just the murder victims of the Holocaust itself.

BTW, I apologize - I don't recognize the last word in the Hebrew phrase in the pic. The first four words are as I mentioned, and are the full name of the holiday - it is colloquially called "Yom ha-Shoah" to differentiate it from "Yom ha-Zikaron," which occurs one week afterwards and is Israel's version of Memorial Day but with more memorial and less barbecues. That last word looks like "tisha'v" or "tisa'b," but I'm stumped. "Tisha" means "nine" as cardinal on its own or ordinal in combination, but I don't know the suffix. It could be a reference to "Tisha b'Av" - the ninth day of the Hebrew month Av, which corresponds to late July or early August, and is a day of fasting and meditation commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem; certain Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox sects commemorate the Holocaust on Tisha b'Av because of Yom ha-Shoah's proximity to Passover (which should be a time of celebration.)