On April 19, 1943, heavily armed Nazi troops penetrated into the Warsaw Ghetto with a grim goal: the liquidation of the ghetto and the deportation of the last remnants of Warsaw\’s Jews — some 40,000 men, women and children.
In his featured speech to the crowd assembled for the Yom HaShoah program at Sinai Temple, Ambassador Dennis Ross, the diplomatic point man for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during previous administrations of George Bush and Bill Clinton, acknowledged his disappointment in the current violence and outlined what he views as the likely possibilities for the conflict.
At Yom HaShoah commemorations across Los Angeles, the Jewish community and friends looked to the past to remember and to the present to engage.
The Citywide Youth Commemoration at Wilshire Boulevard Temple on April 9 was a by-the-kid, for-the-kids affair, with elementary, middle and high school students presenting artistic renditions of their understanding of the Holocaust. Through song, story, poetry and the testimony of survivors they had interviewed, students from 15 Los Angeles area schools ensured that the memory of what happened will be passed on to the next generation. After the Emanuel Academy sang the Yiddish \”Partisan\’s Song,\” students from Fulton Middle School recounted a survivor\’s testimony, \”Seven Days Locked Up,\” in English and Spanish.
This coming Tuesday, we will observe Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day.
This Sunday marks the eighth year that the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument in Pan Pacific Park will serve as the local centerpiece of the annual Worldwide Holocaust Memorial Day, in memory of the 6 million Jews who were murdered in Europe at the hands of the Nazi regime. Hosted this year by the Los Angeles Holocaust Memorial Monument Fund, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Second Generation, the Yom HaShoah gathering is expected to attract more than 2,500 people.
Next week\’s reopening of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust at its new location on Museum Row coincides with a string of events that will commemorate Yom HaShoah.
For Italian expatriates Lotte Katz Singer of Beverly Hills and Ann Signett of the San Fernando Valley, life is surprising as well as beautiful.
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