The commemoration of the murdered and the remembrance of the horrors of the Holocaust were understood by the Jewish communities of post-war Czechoslovakia as a basic preconditions for the beginning of a new life. Organized commemoration ceremonies were one of the few moments when Jews could, in a close circle of those who went through a similar hell, remember the dead as victims of genocide, different from other Czech victims of the Nazi occupation.
Name plays a key role in Jewish scriptures and rituals. The name is a carrier of memory. By getting a name, the newborn becomes a link between the past and the future. What is of special importance is the commemoration of the names of the dead in the Yizkor prayer on the anniversary of their death and on the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. The need to preserve the names of the victims led to the construction of memorials funded by fundraising among the surviving members of the community.
The traditional date of remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust in the Czech lands is March 8, the symbolic an collective Jahrzeit, or the annual day of death, when the dead are commemorated in Judaism. The date of 8 March refers to the slaughter of the first inhabitants of the so-called Terezin family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest mass murder of Czechoslovak citizens during World War II. Jews from the Czech lands around the world still maintain the tradition of this original day of remembrance.