For over a decade now Temple Shalom has been leading with the support of area churches The Tri-County Yom Hashoah Commemoration or Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust. This year the commemoration will be held at 4 p.m. May 3 at St. Timothy’s Catholic Church. This event is free and open to the public and is expected to draw an audience of about 1,200.
Each year this event explores a different theme or topic. This year the topic is Never Again: Has the World Learned? Two speakers are planned, Dr. Elizabeth B. White, senior historian at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and Mitch Bloomer, resource teacher, with the Holocaust Center of Florida in Maitland.
“It is important the way the world is going to remember all the horrors. Things are still occurring for the simple reason of hate whether it is religion or ethnicity,” said Villager Ed Ziegler, a member of Temple Shalom.
A special enhancement to this program is the student art and essay competition. This year the competition is open to area eighth graders. The students entering the essay competition first read the book The Camera of My Family by Catherine Hanf Noren and use their reaction to the book as a jumping off point for their essay. The students entering the art competition are asked to watch the movie The Monument Men and use their reactions as inspiration for their art work.
Participating schools will review the works from the students and submit the best pieces to the Education Committee at Temple Shalom for review. There will be cash prizes awarded at the Day of Remembrance Commemoration for the winners and the work will be exhibited for the public to see at the Ceremony. The Yom Hashoah Education Committee is chaired by Michael Broverman and Shelley and Joel Newman and includes six teachers.
The eighth grade students from Wildwood visited the Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg to enrich the project for them. In addition to touring the museum they were addressed by Lisil Schick, an Austrian Child Survivor. She was 11 year old and part of the Kindertransport in April 1939 which took 10,000 children out of Europe to England. Of these children, only 1,000 of these children saw their parents again. She was fortunate and reunited with her family in 1945 after the war in New York and later moved to Clearwater.
She told them that education was the most important thing that can never be taken away. Her message to warn against evil and bullying was very powerful. There are victims, perpetrators and bystanders. She quoted, “The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.”(Eli Wiesel)
The committee leading the Day of Remembrance Commemoration is chaired by Susan Sirmai Feinberg, of the Village of Pennecamp and Phyllis Kalter of the Village of Tall Trees. Feinberg was able to attend the first trip with the students and found them to be interested and attentive. “They asked several good questions and were very respectful.”
The Day of Remembrance for the Holocaust Commemoration stems from the Israeli national memorial day inaugurated in 1953 known as Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day,”or colloquially as Yom HaShoah. It is Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and the Jewish resistance in that period. Commemorations are held worldwide including at the United Nations.
