Yom HaShoah, also known as Yom Hashoah VeHagevurah, literally means the “day of remembrance of the Catastrophe and the Heroism.” This day is a prescribed time to commemorate, honor and reflect on those who endured the pain, suffering and loss as a result of the Holocaust. The observance is held one week after the seventh day of Passover and occurs on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan. It also falls one week before Yom Hazikaron, the memorial day for Israel’s fallen soldiers.

Also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, for those who died in the Shoah. The word holocaust comes from a Greek word meaning “sacrifice by fire.”

The Shoah, or Holocaust, was initiated by members of the Nationalist Socialist Party (Nazi) which seized power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis believed in the concept of racial superiority, holding that the people of Northern European descent – particularly the Germanic peoples – were better than other races. While many experienced suffering, torture and death, the Nazis held a particular disdain for the Jewish people, counting them “unworthy of life.”

Of the nine million Jews who resided in Europe in the early 1930s, approximately six million – roughly two-thirds – were systematically concentrated, tortured and slain by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Estimates are given that as many as a million of this number were children. A network of over 40,000 facilities across the German-occupied European territories was used to execute the plan of the regime.

Many survivors of the Holocaust found shelter in Allied camps for displaced persons. Between 1948 and 1951, over a half million Jews emigrated to Israel. Others found refuge and new starts in the United States, Canada and other nations.