This year’s Yom HaShoah ceremony to reflect on commemoration during the pandemic
Live national broadcast to take place at Jewish Care, home of the Holocaust Survivors Centre.
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
This year’s Yom HaShoah ceremony, due to take place on April 27, will draw on the experience of commemorating the anniversary during the pandemic.
The ceremony, remembering the Holocaust, was forced to move online in the last two years, but, unexpectedly, there was a greater audience for the event. As Neil Martin, chair of Yom HaShoah UK, put it: “Stuck at home, the community gathered online for Yom HaShoah, lit yellow candles and remembered together as one”.
Now the event is once more going “live”, with the national broadcast taking place at Jewish Care, the home of the Holocaust Survivors Centre. But there will also be the opportunity for families all over the UK — and around the world — to watch online. There will be choirs, musicians, guest speakers, and, of course, testimony from the last remaining survivors, as well as refugees.
Additionally, this year sees the delayed launch of the Yom HaShoah Legacy of the Holocaust initiative. The plan is for 200 “commemorative legacy boards” to be installed in synagogues, school and communal buildings across the UK. They will, says Neil Martin, “create a permanent reminder and local focal point to remember, to tell, and never forget”.
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