Yom HaShoah and the Empty Yellow Chair
Most Jewish holidays have now incorporated the empty yellow chair which signifies the hostages still held captive in Gaza by Hamas into their commemorations and rituals. For example, for the past two Passovers an empty yellow seat has been left at the Seder table to remember those who are absent. We also see empty chairs appearing weekly at the Shabbat table. Illuminated chairs appeared during Eden Golan’s grand finale performance to represent Israel in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest. There are now also numerous empty yellow chair memorials outside Kibbutzim, in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, and around the world. Yom HaShoah now joins the list of holidays and memorial days where for a second time the empty yellow chair takes its place in the proceedings. What is striking about this is that the role, symbolism, and significance of the chair itself changes depending upon the context it is placed within.
Take the Sukkah memorial in Hostages Square for example where yellow chairs sit alongside other chairs around the an extended table. Each chair is a different shape and size which reflects the diversity of the hostages. The purpose of this memorial is to remember a moment frozen in time when Sukkahs and the people within them were abruptly and viciously attacked on 7th October 2023. There is another purpose to this memorial though which is to humanise the hostages and reflect upon their individual personalities and resilience. In some cases, Sukkahs in the North and South of Israel remain standing as it was not possible to dismantle them when Hamas carried out its attack – people fled without having time to take them down. The Sukkah symbolises divine love; Jews who eat and even sleep in it remember the years the Jews spent in the desert after escaping slavery in Egypt. But the Sukkah is also a sign of the fragility and transience of life. Now more than ever the Sukkah articulates this tension between the living and the dead, between those who made it safely out of the desert and those who are still lost in the wilderness, between vulnerability and dependence, and between humanity and impermanence. Thus, the empty yellow chair in this context comes to signify the entrapment of the remaining living hostages and the freedom of those who were released. The chair also remembers those who were murdered in captivity and those who were returned in coffins. The chair essentially stands in for those who are lost from their homes, both the remaining living and murdered hostages who are not safely home yet.
This tension between time and space is also effectively shown in “The Empty Chair: A Symbol of Hope and Longing for Homecoming” memorial, also in Hostages Square. It presents rows of empty yellow chairs which have been deliberately bound together. That there is no possibility for movement within the chairs speaks to how the hostages have been entrapped, confined, and bound to an existence of constant imprisonment. The chairs are located next to a large clock which tracks the days, hours, minutes, and seconds the hostages have spent in captivity. Seeing these two memorials in relation to one another you become aware that time is moving forwards while space seems immobile. And as time ticks on, the confined space in which many hostages are kept becomes more and more oppressive. The chairs here seem to cry out “before it is too late, free us” because they are so tightly packed together. But at the same time, they critically reflect upon Israeli and world responses as the chairs also have sets of eyes on them. These eyes look out to ask what we are doing to help the hostages. They stare at us with pressuring, sorrowful, and weakened yet determined eyes. The chairs are a plea to rescue the hostages now before it’s too late.
The empty yellow chairs outside Kibbutzim and on the streets of America and Europe are symbols of longing and hoping that loved ones and people who we do not know will be reunited with their families. They are symbols of solidarity. They are daily reminders not to forget the hostages. For example, in Israel in particular you see empty yellow chairs in cafes, in restaurants, outside shops, down high streets, and on roundabouts. This is not about traumatisation or opting to live in a traumatised state (although of course people are in pain and continue to suffer) rather you are encouraged to think about one of the remaining 59 hostages who may have sat next to you in a café if they were not a hostage. Many of the chairs have hostage posters on them which helps you feel their presence, learn their story, and imagine the possibility of sitting next to them. You might also be motivated to think about how the use of the yellow chair should become obsolete because the hostages should all be home. These empty chairs should disappear because there should be no use for them. But while they remain you think of all the day-to-day moments that the hostages are missing from our societies. When you walk past empty yellow chairs in restaurants, for example, you may also think about how many hostages have been denied celebrating their birthdays with their loved ones. You become aware of how the empty chair symbolises anniversaries stolen and lost. In this instance the empty yellow chair signifies a state of limbo because of this overwhelming loss but as I mentioned above there is a hopeful element as it allows you to imagine the chair filled and being used by a hostage who has returned.
So how do these contexts connect with Yom HaShoah and what is particular about seeing an empty yellow chair at a Yom HaShoah event?
I want to begin with Yad Vashem’s Yom HaShoah event because here the empty yellow chair not only remembers the 59 hostages still in Gaza because it also commemorates the Holocaust survivors (who are remembered at Yad Vashem through its incredible work and through its own chair memorial to the hostages located in the library) who were murdered on and after 7th October. Moreover, many survivors are still displaced from their homes. That the chair is physically located at this site and was part of the Yom HaShoah event shows that the Holocaust is one tragedy in a survivor’s life. The Holocaust is not the most recent tragedy within their families or the nation which they now call home. The 7th October is sadly part of their biographies and family legacies. The day after Yom HaShoah the news broke that a Holocaust survivor was informed that her great-grandson was killed in Gaza during her visit to the death camp which she survived.
It is striking that this year’s Yom HaShoah theme is “Out of the Depth: The Anguish of Liberation and Rebirth” marking the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany and its collaborators and the liberation of the concentration camps because Holocaust survivor, Shlomo Mansour who survived the Farhud was not rescued from Gaza alive. You might argue that his life began again in Israel when his family fled Iraq – there was a rebirth and liberation from a land which he once called home – but he could not be liberated a second time over because Hamas took away his life. The empty yellow chair here signifies a present-day imprisonment and death rather than an emancipation. Some 80 years on from liberation Israel, a land which so many Holocaust survivors journeyed to after the war, is still waiting for a liberation and rehabilitation of the 59 hostages.
It is important to reflect upon the context of liberation because the empty yellow chair could also represent the loneliness of liberation. While hostage families have been reunited with their loved ones, others have had to bury them and many families are still waiting for the return of their loved one/s. The chair asks searching questions such as “who survived? and “how do I feel safe again?” and “how do I rebuild a normal life?” The hostages and their families have changed as a result of their experiences. The empty chair also seems to speak to how this event should be preserved and commemorated. Should the chair, for example, become part of our future Holocaust commemorations? The chair also speaks to how Holocaust survivors and their families continue to build new lives beyond past and present horrors as some chairs are no longer empty but filled again. They might be displaced or dislodged from their homes but they are alive. The empty chairs in destroyed kibbutzim wait for their owners to return.
Empty chair already plays a significant role in Holocaust memorialisation. One only has to think about the empty chairs in Krakow and “The Abandoned Room (Der verlassene Raum)” in Berlin. The emptiness and absence of Jewish lives reflects the result of the Holocaust and the void left by the victims. These chairs remember deportations and the people who never returned. The chair also represents a time before deportation as it symbolises all the losses before families ghettoisation and mass murder. We might also think about the bureaucracy families faced as they tried to escape. Many of them went from desk to desk to complete the necessary paperwork. Thus chairs featured in Holocaust memorials can also reflect critically on world responses to act before it is too late. The legacy of the empty yellow chair could be more redeeming because there is hope that all the hostages will be returned. There were no yellow chairs placed in the streets to remember the Jews who were being deported or incarcerated in the camps. But today Jews and non-Jews have placed physical markers to remember ongoing events which impact both Jewish and non-Jewish lives. Not all the hostages are Jewish or Israeli and so the empty yellow chair is an inclusive memorial because everyone is remembered.
The empty yellow chair reminds us of our collective responsibility to bring the hostages home and to challenge antisemitism. It should also be seen within the context of Holocaust memory and memorialisation because 7th October directly impacted the lives of some 2,500 Holocaust survivors. The empty yellow chair is in some ways a memorial to the Holocaust survivors who were murdered and displaced yet again. It is also a memorial from Holocaust survivors to their families who were murdered or are still held captive. Crowds gathered on 23rd April in Hostages Square to commemorate Yom HaShoah. This event united Holocaust survivors and the hostage families. This was visualised by Guy Morad who created a piece which presents a Holocaust survivor with her walking stick and number on her arm looking at the large clock in Hostages Square. The Hostages families posted that for them ‘remembering the Holocaust gives [them the] strength to fight for [their] hostages and reminds [them] today, of all days, that we must bring them ALL home – the living for rehabilitation and the murdered for proper burial in their homeland’. Holocaust survivor Aliza Landau was asked to share her story and address those in Hostages Square. People were sitting in yellow chairs as she spoke. These yellow chairs were part of an event which connected Holocaust testimony to the stories of 7th October. The chairs signified this exchange and solidarity between victims because they understand what total loss is. While the two tragedies should not be conflated they both directly impacted the lives of Holocaust survivors. Thus the empty yellow chair could be regarded as a new kind of Holocaust memorial which remembers the fates of Holocaust survivors in the present as well as their families.
