By tradition, six Israelis who survived the Holocaust will light torches during the state ceremony in memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Shoah.

On the evening of April 13, 2026, the official state ceremony marking Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day will take place at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In 2026, Yom HaShoah is observed in Israel on April 14, with the central memorial event beginning the evening before, as it does every year. This year’s theme is “The Jewish Family during the Holocaust,” and once again one of the ceremony’s most powerful symbols will be the lighting of six torches in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered.

For Israel, this is not merely a formal occasion on the national calendar. It is one of the most intimate and emotionally charged days of the year, when the memory of the Holocaust returns not as an abstract historical statistic but through human lives, names, faces, losses, and stories of survival.

This year, the six torchlighters bring together the tragic geography of Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, stretching from Eastern Europe to North Africa, from ghettos and camps to Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel.

Saadia Bahat, born in Lithuania, survived the Vilnius Ghetto, labor camps in Estonia, Stutthof, and a death march.........

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