As Holocaust Torches Are Lit, Remember Ukrainian Jews Facing New Russian Nazism |
By tradition, six Israelis who survived the Holocaust will light torches during the state ceremony in memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah.
On the evening of April 13, 2026, the official state ceremony marking Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day will take place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In 2026, Yom HaShoah is observed in Israel on April 14, with the central memorial event beginning the evening before, as it does every year. This year’s theme is “The Jewish Family during the Holocaust,” and once again one of the ceremony’s most powerful symbols will be the lighting of six torches in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered.
For Israel, this is not merely a formal occasion on the national calendar. It is one of the most intimate and emotionally charged days of the year, when the memory of the Holocaust returns not as an abstract historical statistic but through human lives, names, faces, losses, and stories of survival.
This year, the six torchlighters bring together the tragic geography of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, stretching from Eastern Europe to North Africa, from ghettos and camps to Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel.
Saadia Bahat, born in Lithuania, survived the Vilnius Ghetto, labor camps in Estonia, Stutthof, and a death march. After the war, he arrived in Mandatory Palestine, fought for the country, became an engineer, and spent decades working in Israel’s defense industry.
Mikhail Sidko, born in Ukraine, survived Babi Yar. He watched as his mother, sister, and younger brother were murdered, and he himself was saved by women later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. He went on to serve, work as an engineer, and later immigrate to Israel.
Miryam Bar-Lev, born in Tel Aviv, found herself in Europe as a child and endured Nazi camps there. After the war, she returned to Eretz Israel, became a nurse, and devoted her life to healthcare and education.
Moshe Harari, born in Poland, survived the ghetto, escape, hiding, and postwar violence. He later reached Mandatory Palestine and spent his life working in Israel’s defense sector.
Ilana-Lina Falah, born in Libya, survived the Giado camp, hunger, disease, and the loss of loved ones. Her story is a reminder that the Holocaust did not devastate only European Jewry, but also Jewish communities in North Africa. In Israel, she rebuilt her life and became one of those who preserved the memory of Libyan Jews.
Avigdor Neuman was born in Czechoslovakia, in a town that is now in Ukraine. He survived the ghetto, Birkenau, a death march, and the camps, and later reached Eretz Israel. He went on to fight in Israel’s wars and became part of the story of the Jewish state that Holocaust survivors helped build with their own hands.
That is precisely where the unique moral force of Holocaust Remembrance Day lies. The six torches are not only a symbol of six million murdered Jews. They are six living destinies, six voices of memory, six stories of people who looked into the abyss and did not allow Jewish life to be extinguished.
There is something else Israel must remember as well. So many of those who survived the Holocaust, who passed through ghettos, camps, exile, displacement, and wandering, ultimately returned from the Diaspora to their historic homeland. This is not only a story of suffering. It is also a story of return. The memory of the Holocaust cannot be separated from the memory of dispersion, from the cost of exile, and from the truth that the Jewish people gathered again on their own land.
And yet even today, a significant part of the Jewish people still lives in the Diaspora.
Among them are the Jews of Ukraine, who are living through Russian aggression together with the rest of Ukrainian society — under sirens, under missile attacks, amid loss, evacuation, fear, and daily uncertainty.
Israel should remember them as its own. They are part of one people. In Ukraine, they are not standing aside. They are fighting, volunteering, rescuing families, burying loved ones, and enduring suffering together with the entire country. Their bond with Ukraine is living, deep, and historical. For that reason, Holocaust memory today must speak not only about the past, but also about the moral obligation to see our own people and stand with them wherever they are.
For many, what is happening in Ukraine looks like the return to Europe of a new evil — Russian Nazism, arriving through imperial violence, the destruction of cities, deportations, and the attempt to crush the freedom of an entire nation. And when Ukrainian Jews go through this war together with all of Ukraine, this is not someone else’s pain. It is the pain of part of the Jewish people, and Israel has no right to forget it.
For Israeli society, ceremonies like this matter deeply. They remind us that the Holocaust is not something distant or abstract. It is the story of families, communities, and a people that lost millions, yet endured, returned to life, and built its home again.
On Yom HaShoah, Israel remembers the murdered. But it also remembers the survivors, the builders, the witnesses, and the generations that came after them. That is why the six torches at Yad Vashem are not only flames of mourning. They are flames of continuity.