Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah, known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel, it is a national memorial day. The first official commemorations took place in 1951, and the observance of the day was anchored in a law passed by the Knesset in 1959. It is held on the 27th of Nisan, unless the 27th would be adjacent to the Jewish Sabbath, in which case the date is shifted by a day.
"March of the Living" at Auschwitz, 2014
Flags at half mast at sundown on Yom HaShoah
Sirens blare at 10:00 a.m. as motorists exit their cars and stand in silence in front of the Prime Minister's House in Jerusalem and throughout Israel on Yom HaShoah.
The March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau is held annually on Yom HaShoah.
Nisan in the Babylonian and Hebrew calendars is the month of the barley ripening and first month of spring. The name of the month is an Akkadian language borrowing, although it ultimately originates in Sumerian nisag "first fruits". In the Hebrew calendar it is the first month of the ecclesiastical year, called the "first of the months of the year", "first month", and the month of Aviv בְּחֹ֖דֶשׁ הָאָבִֽיב ḥōḏeš hāʾāḇîḇ). It is called Nissān in the Book of Esther. It is a month of 30 days. In the year 2024, 1 Nisan will occur on 9 April. Counting from 1 Tishrei, the civil new year, it would be the seventh month, but in contemporary Jewish culture, both months are viewed as the first and seventh simultaneously, and are referred to as one or the other depending on the specific religious aspects being discussed.
The Seder Table the ritual feast in the Jewish holiday of Passover which occurs on the 15 Nisan.