Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) 2038

The dates

Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laGvurah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, usually shortened to Yom HaShoah) is a statutory day of the State of Israel, fixed by law to 27 Nisan and dedicated to the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and to the acts of resistance and revolt. It opens the evening before with the state ceremony at Yad Vashem and runs until nightfall the next day; at ten in the morning a two-minute siren sounds and the country stops, including on the roads. It is not a festival and not a day off: workplaces and schools operate, schools hold ceremonies, and places of entertainment are closed.

How the date was chosen

In the first years after the war Israel had no agreed date for remembrance, and the argument over it ran on for years. The Chief Rabbinate wanted the memory attached to an existing fast, 10 Tevet, arguing that Nisan (the month of redemption) is not a month for mourning. Others proposed 14 Nisan, the day the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out in April 1943, except that it falls on the eve of Passover. The compromise the Knesset adopted in 1951 was 27 Nisan: six days after Passover, close enough to the uprising to keep the link, far enough from the festival.

In 1953 the Knesset passed the law that established Yad Vashem as the state's remembrance authority, and in 1959 the law fixing the day itself. Its first section is brief: “27 Nisan is Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, dedicated year by year to communion with the memory of the Holocaust that the Nazis and their helpers inflicted on the Jewish people, and with the memory of the acts of heroism and revolt in those days” ¹.

Later amendments added two shifting rules: if 27 Nisan falls on a Friday the observance moves back to 26 Nisan, and if it falls on a Sunday it moves forward to 28 Nisan. Both exist to keep the day, and its eve, clear of the Sabbath. Two rules are enough, because in the Hebrew calendar 27 Nisan can only land on four weekdays: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or Sunday.

What the day looks like

The evening ceremony. The day opens with the central state ceremony in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where six torches are lit, one for each million, by Holocaust survivors. It is broadcast live and sets the tone for the whole day's programming.

The siren. The next morning at ten o'clock a two-minute siren sounds across the country. The law puts it plainly: “on Remembrance Day there shall be, throughout the state, two minutes of silence during which all work shall cease and all traffic on the roads shall stop” ². In practice this is the day's best-known moment: drivers pull over on the motorway, step out of their cars and stand. The siren used to sound at eight in the morning and was moved to ten so that schools could prepare for it.

Ceremonies and teaching. Schools, army bases and workplaces hold memorial gatherings; flags on public buildings are lowered to half-mast; and radio and television give the whole day over to the subject: testimony, documentaries and personal accounts.

Entertainment closed. The law prohibits public entertainment on the day and requires cafés to be closed on its eve. In practice cinemas, theatres and music venues shut from the evening before.

Every person has a name

One of the difficulties of this particular memory is the number itself. Six million is hard to hold in the mind and harder to mourn; the larger it gets, the more abstract it becomes.

The answer that emerged is very simple: read out names. On Remembrance Day a ceremony is held in the Knesset, and in schools, local authorities and communities abroad, in which people read aloud the names of those who were murdered, very often the names of their own relatives. The reading goes on for hours, and it is aimed precisely against abstraction: not millions, but one person, and then another.

That ceremony, and Yad Vashem's long project of recording every victim's name individually, are both called after a poem by the Israeli poet Zelda that opens “every person has a name”. The poem itself is not about the Holocaust at all (it lists the names a person receives from their parents, from the people around them and from what they did with their life) but it has become a line Israelis repeat every year, for the straightforward reason that it says what this day is trying to do.

Holocaust, heroism, and 27 January

The day's full name carries two words, and an argument that occupied Israel for decades sits in the join between them. “Heroism” entered the name because in the 1950s it was difficult to speak about the Holocaust without attaching a story of resistance to it, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising stood at its centre. Over time the centre of gravity shifted: ceremonies and school programmes today deal less with fighters and more with the testimony of people who were there, including, above all, those who never held a weapon. The name stayed as it was.

A second difference concerns the date. Most of the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January, the day Auschwitz was liberated, following a United Nations resolution of 2005. Israel marks 27 Nisan. The two dates are not in competition; they simply follow from two vantage points, one measuring the memory from the end of the camps and the other from the Hebrew calendar and the uprising.

Common questions about Yom HaShoah

When is Yom HaShoah?
On 27 Nisan (3/5/38). On the civil calendar that falls in April, occasionally at the very end of April or the start of May.

Is the date always the same?
The Hebrew date is fixed, but it carries two statutory shifts: if 27 Nisan falls on a Friday the day moves back to 26 Nisan, and if it falls on a Sunday it moves forward to 28 Nisan. In all other years it stays on the 27th.

When does it begin?
At sunset before the date, when the state ceremony at Yad Vashem is held. It ends at nightfall the following day.

What time is the siren?
At ten in the morning, for two minutes. In the early years it sounded at eight.

Is it a public holiday?
No. Workplaces and schools operate normally, and schools hold ceremonies. What is closed by law are places of entertainment, including cafés on the eve of the day.

Is it marked outside Israel?
Yes. Many Jewish communities mark 27 Nisan with ceremonies and name readings. Separately, many countries mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January.

Yom HaShoah on the calendar: Hebrew and civil dates together

The grid at the top of this page shows Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day inside the month it falls in, with the Hebrew date and the civil date side by side. You can see at a glance which civil date carries 27 Nisan in the year selected, which weekday it lands on, and whether this is one of the years in which the observance moves back to the 26th or forward to the 28th. The grid also shows the sequence the day belongs to: Passover, a week and a half earlier, and Memorial Day and Independence Day, a week later.
The button above the grid prints it to a single page, portrait or landscape, without the navigation or this text.

• Every festival of the year at a glance: the annual holidays calendar
• The full printable calendar: home page
• The Hebrew month it falls in: Nisan

Related pages

• Printable calendar for May 2038
• The Hebrew month of Nisan 5798
• All the Jewish holidays of 2038
• Printable 2026 Jewish calendar with holidays