5 Facts for Yom HaShoah

Thursday is Yom HaShoah—translated from Hebrew as Day of Remembrance—which is a day that Jewish people around the world remember the Holocaust and the suffering of the more than 6 million people killed because of their religion, race and anything else that made them different. So in honor of that, we present events to know about on or around Yom HaShoah, in addition to information about the holiday itself.

• National Ceremony—There will be a National Day of Remembrance ceremony in the United States Capital rotunda at 11 a.m. The theme of this year's ceremony is "Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue." Watch the live webcast of the ceremony here.
• Soap Myth—The play explores rumors that the Nazis turned the fat of Jewish victims into soap, and talks of one survivor's pursuit to establish it as truth. The play is being performed through Sunday at the the Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center in New York City. For more information, click here.
• More Than 50 Years Old—The Day of Remembrance was commemorated in 1953, and was written into law by then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and then President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.
• Israel State Ceremony—At 10 a.m. on Yom HaShoah in Israel, a siren sounds for two minutes, and all people throughout the country cease action as they pay tribute to those who died during the Holocaust.
• School Programs—Many schools around the world require Holocaust education, and many focus them around the Day of Remembrance. In Israel, high school students, and thousands of people around the world, hold a memorial ceremony in Auschwitz in what is now called the "March of the Living."