That we may remember
'Never Again' is not a slogan but the daily labor of memory.
Behind the number, people
Six million is a number hard to take in. But behind it is not statistics but individual lives: names, faces, families, stories cut short. The danger of a large number is that it depersonalizes. To remember is to return to each one a name.
How to honor their memory
A memorial candle
Light a candle of memory (ner neshama) — an ancient Jewish sign of the soul and of a light that keeps burning.
A stone of memory
Place a stone on a memorial — in Jewish tradition a sign that memory remains, unlike fading flowers.
A name
Read the names of the dead. Yad Vashem gathers the victims' names in the Hall of Names — so that none remains nameless.
The essentials, briefly
The systematic, organized persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In Hebrew this catastrophe is called the 'Shoah.'
About six million Jews — roughly two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, including about one and a half million children.
The Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism, observed on 27 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar (spring). On this day a two-minute siren sounds in Israel and mourning ceremonies are held.
Yom HaShoah (27 Nisan) is the Jewish and Israeli day of remembrance. 27 January is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the UN on the day Auschwitz was liberated.
The Nazis did not take Baku, and Azerbaijan became a refuge for Jewish refugees. But the Mountain Jews in the occupied districts of the Northern Caucasus faced the Holocaust directly.
It is a vow of memory and vigilance: to remember the Holocaust, to stand against hatred and antisemitism, and to prevent anything like it from happening to any people.
Never again.