Holocaust Memorial Day and Deir Yassin Remembered Published in The Newsletter of The Liberal Jewish Synagogue , London, UK, March 2001 Jews remember. It is one of the things we are best at.
Remembrance is carved deep into the fibre of our being, and reflected everywhere in our rituals.
Every Shabbat is a remembrance of creation, every Pesach a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. Every Tishah b'Av brings remembrance of loss and exile, from the destruction of the ancient Temples to the tragedies of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms and the Holocaust. Now, by government fiat, the nation has a Holocaust Memorial Day to remember our deepest pain. It falls on the 27th January, the day of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Some of us would have preferred a more inclusive name, that acknowledges the historic suffering of other British ethnic communities.