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. 

Holocaust Remembrance Day Starts Tonight: Dudu Fisher Sings The Partisan Song

With Holocaust Remembrance Day starting at sunset today and continuing through tomorrow, we're holding off on the humor until Wednesday, so we can post videos appropriate for the commemoration.

"Zog nit keyn mol" (Never Say; Yiddish: זאָג ניט קיין מאָל‎) or "Partizaner lid" (Partisan Song) is a Yiddish song considered one of the chief anthems of the Holocaust survivors and is sung in memorial services around the world.

The lyrics of the song were written in 1943 by Hirsh Glick, a young Jewish inmate of the Vilna Ghetto. The title means "Never Say", and derives from the first line of the song. Glick's lyrics were set to music from a pre-war Soviet song

The annual March of the Living program brings thousands of young people from around the world each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day to Auschwitz-Birkenau to honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and to pledge to build a better world for all humanity.

In 2013, singer Dudu Fisher and the March of the Living Choir sang The Partisan Song on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO IS NOT VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY.  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.