The Zionist Meaning of Yom HaShoah

In 1951, the Knesset designated the 27th day of the month of Nissan Yom ha-Zikaron la-Shoah v’la-Gvurah, the day of remembrance for the Holocaust and the heroism—the last term referring to those who took up arms against the Nazis. (On years like this, when the 27th falls on a Friday, it is observed on the 26th, which is today.) The date, Haviv Rettig Gur writes, is a specifically Zionist way of commemorating the destruction of European Jewry. Many rabbis felt that, rather than create a new day of mourning, the Holocaust should be folded into other national tragedies on the Ninth of Av. For the rest of the world, January 27—the day the Soviets liberated Auschwitz—is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. But Israel chose this date in part for another reason: