The year 2021 marks the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It also marks the end of the Second World War, and the liberation of the remaining extermination camps where Jews were being held.
Here in the U.S.A. and in Israel we will observe Yom HaShoah on April 7-8 in 2021 (the 26th day of the month of Nisan) to also bring attention to the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The European Union and United Nations recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 each year in recognition of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945.
Yom HaShoah is a day set aside for Jews to remember the Holocaust. For those of us who have grown up knowing full well what the Holocaust meant, the lives it took, it is a day of remembrance. But for the younger Jews, some who don’t even understand the significance of the Holocaust, it should be a day of learning, coming to understanding the meaning of evil and hatred in Germany and the rest of Europe in the 1940s.