In 1955 Yad Vashem began documenting the victims of the Holocaust. On that year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, schools were instructed, for the first time, to discuss the subject with their pupils. In 1953, the Knesset passed a law creating Yad Vashem, the official Israeli memorial institution for the Holocaust victims. The beacons have become a regular feature of Holocaust Memorial Day. The following year the events included planting a memorial forest and lighting six beacons in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis. The Israeli government also held a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in New York. The Israel Post Office issued a special commemorative envelope and a bronze statue of Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, was unveiled in Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz named for the hero. The main event remained at the Holocaust Crypt on Mount Zion, but in addition to the religious services, Zionist leaders gave speeches. Thus on Nissan 27, which in 1951 worked out to be May 3 (the Jewish and Gregorian calendars do not coincide), a Holocaust Remembrance Day took shape as a more official, and less religious, ceremony. Though over the years the association of this day with the Holocaust diminished, it is still observed in that way. Nonetheless, the Rabbinate instructed people to continue observing the 10th of Tevet as a memorial day for Holocaust victims whose date of death is unknown. In April the Knesset approved the 27th of Nissan, a week after Passover. Three were proposed: again 10 Tevet Passover and September 1, the date the war broke out on. The Israeli parliament, the Knesset, did not have a special ceremony.īut in March 1951, the Knesset decided to take an active role, and set about choosing a new date for Holocaust Remembrance Day. They mostly took the form of funerals, in which artifacts and the ashes and bones of the dead brought over from Europe were interred. The events were organized by the Rabbinate, organizations of former European Jewish communities and the Israeli Defense Forces. The following year, in December 1950, some 70 ceremonies were held around the country. That evening, a special radio program on the Holocaust was broadcast at 9:30 P.M.
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