ABSTRACT
Holocaust Remembrance Day precedes Remembrance Day for the fallen by seven days. The official event that opens Independence Day includes as its initial segment the closing of Remembrance Day. Holocaust Remembrance Day begins in silence, opening with solemn assembly at the national Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, attended by numerous survivors and dignitaries. Israeli Jews accept the separation, contiguity and continuity of these Days as morally correct, even though the immediacy of transition from mourning of Remembrance Day to the celebration of Independence Day is felt as especially heartrending. The difference is one of modulation: to cry crisis the wails rise and fall; to intone bereavement their note is uniform. The next morning the same practice is repeated, but for two minutes. On the morning of Holocaust Remembrance Day the sirens wail for one minute. In Israel this wail is the most dominant sound of the presence of absence.
