Holocaust Remembrance Day-Yom HaShoah, Hitler's Birthday, 4/20/09

by Tina Kells | April 20, 2009 at 10:46 am

851 views | 33 Recommendations | 7 comments

April 20, 2009 hosts a rather unexpected duo of events to be marked on the same day; the 120th anniversary of Hitler's Birthday, and the beginning of Yom HaShoah, also called Holocaust Remembrance Day.

These two observances stand together on April 20 in an opposing and yet, somehow oddly fitting, grouping of occasions. The contrast between the people who are likely to honor Hitler's Birthday, and those who want to pay tribute to Holocaust survivors by observing Yom HaShoah is an interesting twist of fate.

Neo-Nazis continue to thrive in some parts of the world and these people venerate Adolf Hitler as a misunderstood and misrepresented visionary. For supporters of the Neo-Nazi movement Hitler's Birthday is a day to be honored and respected. 2009 marks the 120th anniversary of Hitler's birth on April 20, 1889.

Compare this to the memorials, testimonials and tributes that will come on Holocaust Remembrance Day and the irony of Hitler's Birthday falling on the same date is hard to ignore. Yom HaShoah technically begins at sundown on April 20, 2009 but is not celebrated on this date every year; it can fall anywhere between the second week of April and the first week of May.

Stated in terms of the Hebrew calendar the date of Yom HaShoah never changes, but the date of Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Gregorian calendar shifts from year to year. For all but the most Orthodox Jews, Yom HaShoah is always celebrated on the 27 of Nisan, but on the Gregorian calendar it has a much less predictable date.

So in 2009 Hitler's Birthday will be shared with Holocaust Remembrance Day. It seems as if some cosmic force is trying hard to get Neo-Nazis to stop and rethink a few things on this 120th anniversary of the birth of a man they very much admire. The evil that Hitler brought to the world will be hard for anybody to ignore on this birthday.

In an ironic and bitter coincidence, Hitler's birthday and the start of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, fall on the same day. Technically they overlap. Hitler's birthday is April 20 and Yom Hashoah begins tonight, which is the beginning of a new day according to the Jewish tradition in which days run from sundown to sundown. But that really is just a technicality.

The truth is that the world over, announcements for memorial events like the one at which I am speaking tonight in Louisville, KY invite people to join together on the 20th. The irony is pretty clear -- today being both the 120th anniversary of the birth of the man who sought the total annihilation of the Jewish people and the day upon which we prove his failure by gathering publicly and remembering what he tried to accomplish.

The bitterness of today's coincidence lies in the fact that even though Hitler didn't win, it's hard to speak of either the Jewish people or the human race "winning".

6 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Yuliya Talmazan

at 10:51 on April 20th, 2009

a very strange coincidence indeed

albertacowpoke

at 11:24 on April 20th, 2009

Thank you for bringing this story to us.

gassa e basta

at 12:26 on April 20th, 2009

gassa e basta has contributed a photo to this story.

djermano

at 16:50 on April 20th, 2009

I wonder where the Rememberance Day is for all the Innocent People killed by American Naked Bombing Aggression? We can start at Nagasaki, and Hiroshima..clearly targeted innocent civilians, then there is Tokyo bombings, Dresden...Vietnam comes to mind...That was about 7 million...... Looks like the murder of innocent people out does the number of Jews killed in the holocaust...Let's see how many were massacred in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and how about the killings in Gaza? Seems to be much more in other incidents.

We sure do remember the Unknown Soldier don't we. But nothing is ever mentioned about remembering innocent civilians. How many innocent people were killed during the Civil War? How many Native American Indians wiped out? How many black americans?

Wow.... We have this uncanny ability to ignore the obvious.

Rev. Jermano

Veritas (not verified)

at 21:25 on April 20th, 2009

Wow, djermano...where to even begin? Your choice of words clearly betrays your prejudices ("innocent people" versus "Jews"), but your determination to spew incoherent and incorrect statistics makes you wrong not only morally, but also factually.

The "Rules of War" have changed substantially over the centuries, but acceptable tactics have almost always shared a common thread: they were designed to further a military objective against an ENEMY. The Holocaust, however, not only stands out as the most cruelly efficient effort to eradicate an entire race of people in history, but also served no conceivable military objective. Even taking the high-end of accepted figures, the death toll from your examples in WWII & Vietnam comes to less than ONE million (still a tragic figure, but nowhere near 7 million).

In any case, you present an arbitrary set of examples that bear no resemblence to the Holocaust, and that seem to imply that the United States and Israel are the only two countries in the history of the world who have killed civilians during wartime. Why stop there? History abounds with better examples of ruthless killing than most of those you mentioned:

- There is evidence that prehistoric humans killed off the Neanderthals using cooperative tactics. This caused an outright extinction of a species.

- The Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks all were guilty of large-scale civilian killings (though, in fairness, the modern concept of "civilian" didn't really exist yet).

- The Romans were a famously bloodthirsty lot, but, with the exception of a few truly psychotic emperors, they played by the rules (granted, the Romans were the ones who wrote the rules, but they made sure that everyone knew the rules and the consequences for breaking them)

- China, India, and Japan all had their share of ruthless civilian killings (both in ancient and modern times).

- Wars in Europe became progressively more "civilized" until the trenches and chemical warfare of WWI.

- The best estimates indicate that Stalin had over 20 million Soviet citizens executed, and many more starved when he refused to admit the failure of centrally planned agriculture.

As horrifying as many of these examples are, none of them, with the possible exception of the Stalinist USSR, was as calculated as marching prisoners by the millions into gas chambers and incenerators.

djermano

at 03:08 on April 21st, 2009

I am not wrong on this... and you know that. There are more innocent people who have died thoughout history by militaries and war...that were not Jews.....and they are not even whimpered in a breath of rememberance.....yet we are constantly reminded of the Jews victimization.

Your assertion or implication that Hitlers War is the precipice to remember that Germans are responsible for genocide of the Jews is furtherest from the truth....when in fact Jews have been responsible for their own eradication. Stalin a Jew certainly had his enemies who were also Jews.... How this suddenly becomes a Jewish holiday as if Jews never had a hand in their own demise is quite astonishing.

Your numbers are clearly wrong... The death toll in Iraq alone is over one million. And the Vietnam War had over 7 million killed....I had not even added WWII statistics.

The fact is the US has an astonishing record of military aggression in the world. I mentioned only the few because this article is about the Jewish Holiday.....but of course I agree we should look more deeply into history... It proves my point that more innocent people have perished that are not Jews and we have no recollection or concern to them. The rules of war are never acceptable....and all people who are victims deserve as most or more respect in Rememberance than only the Jewish rendition. Let's not discriminate here.

Rev. Jermano