Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Yom HaShoah Special: Japanese Hashalom Choir Sings "Eli Eli" at March of the Living


Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the date in the Jewish calendar to mourn the loss of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

Eli, Eli is a poem by Hannah Senesh, the 23-year-old who left Hungary in 1939 to settle on a kibbutz in Israel. She was trained by the British to be a paratrooper to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Captured and killed by the Nazis, she is still a national heroine in Israel.

Through her brief but noteworthy life, Senesh became a symbol of idealism and self-sacrifice. Her poems, made famous in part because of her unfortunate death, reveal a woman imbued with hope, even in the face of adverse circumstances.

Her diary and literary works were later published, and many of her more popular poems have been set to music. The best known of these is Towards Caesarea, more popularly known today as Eli, Eli with a melody created by David Zahavi and sung by artists including Ofra Haza, Regina Spektor, and Sophie Milman. 
 
In 2018, Eli, Eli was sung by the Hashalom Choir of Japan at the March of the Living Ceremony in Birkenau in recognition of the role played by Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sempo Sugihara in helping 6,000 Jews flee Europe. Sugihara, vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania issued transit visas to them so that they could travel through Japanese territory, risking his job and the lives of his family.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO. 

1 comment:

  1. Very touching. Many thanks to this excellent and special Japanese Hashalom Choir.

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