Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day 2025 will be observed this year from Wednesday evening, April 23, through Thursday, April 24. The official state opening ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day will take place on Wednesday, April 23 at 8 pm in Yad Vashem’s Warsaw Ghetto Square on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. The State Opening Ceremony will be held at Yad Vashem on Wednesday, April 23 at 8 pm.
The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem and are broadcast live. Marking the start of the day, in the presence of the President of the State of Israel and the Prime Minister, dignitaries, survivors, children of survivors and their families, gather together with the general public to take part in the memorial ceremony in which six torches, representing the six million murdered Jews, are lit.
The following morning, the ceremony at Yad Vashem begins with the sounding of a siren for two minutes throughout the entire country. For the duration of the sounding, work is halted, people walking in the streets stop, cars pull off to the side of the road and everybody stands at silent attention in reverence to the victims of the Holocaust. Afterward, the focus of the ceremony at Yad Vashem is the laying of wreaths at the foot of the six torches, by dignitaries and the representatives of survivor groups and institutions.
Other sites of remembrance in Israel, such as the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, also host memorial ceremonies, as do schools, military bases, municipalities and places of work.
Throughout the day, programs about the Holocaust will be broadcast on radio and television. In recent years, other countries and Jewish communities have adopted Yom Hashoah, the 27th of Nisan, to mark their own day of memorial for the victims of the Holocaust.
The State Opening Ceremony will be held at Yad Vashem on Wednesday, April 23 at 8 pm. The central theme of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day is entitled “Out of the Depths: The Anguish of Liberation and Rebirth,” marking 80 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The ceremony will be broadcast live at 8 pm Israel time (1 PM US EDT) and will feature a simultaneous translation into English and Hebrew as well as French, Spanish, German, Arabic and Russian.
