WATCH LIVE: Yad Vashem hosts state Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony

President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a wide range of dignitaries, survivors, children of survivors and their families are taking part in the ceremony.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Updated: APRIL 11, 2018 20:04
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2018 (Yad Vashem / YouTube)
The central state ceremony marking the start of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day in Israel is taking place at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a wide range of dignitaries, survivors, children of survivors and their families are taking part in the ceremony.
This year's theme, on occasion of the 70th anniversary of Israel's independence, is "70 Years of Remembering and Building: Holocaust Survivors and the State of Israel."
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah in Hebrew) is a national day of commemoration in Israel, on which the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are memorialized. It is a solemn day, beginning at sunset on the 27th of the month of Nisan and ending the following evening, according to the traditional Jewish custom of marking a day. Places of entertainment are closed and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country.
At the Yad Vashem ceremony, six torches, representing the six million murdered Jews, are lit.
The following morning a siren blares for two minutes in cities and communities across the entire country. While the sirens play life in the country comes to a standstill -- work is halted, people walking in the streets stop, cars pull off to the side of the road and everybody stands at silent attention in reverence to the victims of the Holocaust.
Other sites of remembrance in Israel, such as the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, also host memorial ceremonies, as do schools, military bases, municipalities and places of work. Throughout the day, both the television and radio broadcast programs about the Holocaust.