In the Stillness, Their Names Endure

By Guestblogger Harvey Goldberg

Yom HaShoah, whose full title is Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laGevurah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day), is one of the most solemn days on the Jewish calendar. It commemorates the Shoah, or Holocaust—the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jewish men, women, and children by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. The date was chosen to fall near Passover to honor and recall the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943—the night of the first Passover Seder—a powerful symbol of Jewish resistance and courage. In 2026, Yom HaShoah is observed from sundown Monday, April 13, to nightfall Tuesday, April 14.

More than 80 years after the end of World War II, the Jewish people have still not recovered numerically; there are fewer Jews in the world today than there were on the eve of World War II in 1939.

My grandparents, having immigrated to Canada in the early years of the last century, were spared the immediate impact of the tragedy. Yet the worlds they left behind were destroyed. Their villages—Yampol, Luninets, and Ludvipol (today Sosnove), in what are today western Ukraine and southern Belarus—were utterly devastated, with virtually all of their inhabitants murdered, many by firing squads on the brink of mass graves, including siblings, cousins, extended family members, friends, rabbis, and the teachers of their youth.
When I was young, on my grandparents’ bookshelf there was a Yizkor Book—a book of remembrance in Hebrew and Yiddish—in which survivors and townspeople who had immigrated before the darkness recounted, in loving detail, the towns of their youth that no longer existed.

In Ottawa, Yom HaShoah is commemorated at a solemn community ceremony. Six survivors traditionally light six candles of remembrance. With the passing years, fewer survivors remain, and their children and grandchildren now take up this sacred task. Prayers of mourning are recited, and survivors or scholars bear witness to the cataclysm that engulfed our people.

In 2010, my family and I had the privilege of being in Jerusalem on Yom HaShoah. At 11 in the morning, sirens sounded across the country, and the entire nation came to a halt. Cars stopped on highways, drivers stood beside them, people paused in the streets, and work ceased in factories and shops—all to commemorate the tragedy.

In those moments of stillness, whether in Jerusalem, Ottawa, or in the quiet reflection of our own homes, we remember not only how our people died but also how they lived: with faith, dignity, and an enduring commitment to one another. We remember the worlds that were lost and the names that might have been forgotten, and we affirm that their memory is carried forward in us.

I will give them… a name that endures beyond sons and daughters… an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” — Isaiah 56:5