Yom HaZikaron laShoah, Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day, is most often referred to as Yom HaShoah. It is observed as Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest act of resistance to Nazi aggression during the Holocaust.

The first official commemorations took place in 1951, and the observance of the day was anchored in a law passed by the Knesset in 1959. It is held on the 27th of Nisan (which falls this year on April 18), unless...