As Israel prepares to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday night and Tuesday, the country continues to feel the effects of conflict, with Yad Vashem announcing that the official state ceremony will be replaced with a pre-recorded broadcast.

The program will air at the start of Holocaust Memorial Day, on Monday, April 13, at 8:00 p.m., with addresses by President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The memorial torch will be lit by former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, himself a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Yad Vashem Council.

The central theme for this year’s state commemorations is “The Jewish Family During the Holocaust.”

Known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah, the day is one of the most solemn days on Israel’s national calendar, marked on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nissan, when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began.

During the ceremony, six Holocaust survivors will light torches in commemoration of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazis, while two more will give a speech and recite the El Maleh Rahamim prayer. Short film portraits will introduce each person, capturing their personal testimonies of survival and resilience. These films will be available on the Yad Vashem website.

Saadia Bahat was born in 1928 in Alytus, Lithuania. After moving to Vilnius in 1939, his family was forced into the ghetto following the German invasion. His father was murdered in an Aktion. In 1943, Bahat volunteered for forced labor and was sent to camps in Estonia, where he endured starvation, freezing conditions, and brutal marches. When his shoes fell apart, he walked barefoot in the snow.

He survived repeated selections and was later transferred to Stutthof, where he was among a handful of children spared. Forced to work as a welder, he was eventually sent on a death march, fell ill with typhus, and was left behind — only to be liberated by Soviet forces.

After the war, he reached Mandatory Palestine, fought in the War of Independence, and built a career as an engineer at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, later becoming an award-winning sculptor.

Michael Sidko was born in 1936 in Kyiv. When the Germans invaded in 1941, his family attempted to flee, but a last-minute decision to leave the train left the family stranded and separated from Sidko’s father. Soon after, they were arrested and taken to Babi Yar, where Sidko and his brother Grisha were separated from their mother and siblings and witnessed their murder.

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