Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day began this evening (Sunday) with a special ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. This is the first Holocaust Memorial Day since the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, the largest massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

This year, the event is being held under the theme: “A Lost World: The Destruction of Jewish Communities.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog spoke at the ceremony at Yad Vashem. Both leaders stated that the October 7 massacre was not the same as the Holocaust.

In his remarks, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that October 7 was not the same as the Holocaust, "not because of an absence of intent to annihilate us, but because of the absence of the ability to do so. Because the intention is the same intention."

"Never again means now. Never again, because 80 years after the Holocaust, after the terrible murder of six million Jews, one-third of our people, once again, there are evil people who are ruthless and brutal, and they massacred us, raped and tortured and abducted," he said.

Tomorrow morning, at 10 am, a two-minute siren will be heard throughout the country. Millions of Israelis will stand in silence in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust during the siren.