Israel comes to a standstill to mark Yom HaShoah and remember 6 million

Israel came to a standstill on Thursday morning with a two-minute siren wailing across the country in remembrance of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Pedestrians stood in place, buses stopped on busy streets and cars pulled over on major roads – their drivers standing on the roads with their heads bowed.

In homes and businesses, people stopped what they were doing to pay homage to the victims of the Nazi genocide, in which a third of the world’s Jews were annihilated.

A wreath-laying ceremony at the Yad Vashem memorial followed, with Israeli leaders and Holocaust survivors in attendance. Other ceremonies, prayers and musical performances took place in schools, community centres and army bases around the country.

The names of those who died in the genocide are typically read aloud in parliament throughout the day.

The annual remembrance is one of the most solemn on Israel’s calendar. Restaurants, cafes and places of entertainment shut down, and radio and TV programming are dedicated almost exclusively to documentaries about the Holocaust, interviews with survivors and sombre music.

The Israeli flag flew at half-mast.

The Holocaust runs deep in Israeli public consciousness. The state was established in 1948, three years after the genocide ended with the conclusion of the Second World War, as a place of refuge for Jews across the world.

Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors who lost their families fled there and made it their home.

According to the Hebrew calendar, Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising – the most significant, yet doomed, act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust that helped shape Israel’s national psyche, symbolising strength and the struggle for freedom.

The commemoration began on Wednesday night with a state ceremony at the national Holocaust memorial in which leaders voiced concerns about a rising tide of antisemitism worldwide.

President Reuven Rivlin touched on surging antisemitism in Europe, which he said “is once again rearing its head, fuelled by waves of immigration, economic crises and disillusionment with the political establishment”.

In veiled criticism of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he urged the government to rethink its cultivation of alliances with nationalist parties in Europe who have antisemitic pasts.

Mr Netanyahu has come under fire for embracing a string of eastern European leaders who have lavished Israel with political support while promoting a distorted image of the Holocaust and seeking to diminish their culpability while making heroes out of anti-Soviet nationalists involved in the mass killing of Jews.

The PM also stressed the continued threat of antisemitic extremism. He said that the extreme right, extreme left and radical Islam agree on “one thing: their hatred of Jews”.