Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Program
About Yom Hashoah
Each year the JCC gathers local educators and Holocaust survivors to come together and create a program and memorial service that will educate the public about the horror of the Nazi regime and to teach the importance of tolerance. Holocaust survivors take a leading role in planning the Yom Hashoah Memorial Program and providing living testimony about their own experiences in an effort to ensure that such crimes are never repeated.
Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Day - 2010 - Community Wide Event
Date: April 11, 2010
Time:7:00 PM
Location:Uptown JCC
Details: Presentation by Dr. Michael Berenbaum | 3rd Annual Educator of the Year award presentation | Recognition of the students chosen for the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) Donald Mintz Leadership Mission to Washington | Lighting of a 6 candle Menorah to represent the memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust
This event is free and open to the public.
Who is Dr. Berenbaum?
Dr. Michael Berenbaum is a scholar, professor, rabbi, writer, and film-maker, who specializes in the study of the memorial of the Holocaust. He is perhaps best known for his work as Deputy Director of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (1979 - 1980), Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (1988 - 1993), and Director of the USHMM's Holocaust Research Institute (1993 - 1997); as such, Berenbaum played a major role in the creation of the USHMM and the content of its permanent exhibition. From 1997 - 1999, Berenbaum served as President and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and subsequently (and currently) as Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, located at the American Jewish University (formerly known as the University of Judaism), in Los Angeles, CA.
Berenbaum, graduated from Queens College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 and received his doctorate from Florida State University in 1975. He also attended The Hebrew University, the Jewish Theological Seminary and Boston University. Berenbaum received Rabbinic ordination by Rabbi Yaakov Rabin at the age of 23. Berenbaum is currently a Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University.
He is the author and editor of eighteen books, including After Tragedy and Triumph, a study of the state of American Jewry in the early 1990s, as well as The World Must Know, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, and others. Berenbaum is the Executive Editor of the New Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd ed., that includes 22 volumes, six million words, and 25,000 individual contributions to Jewish knowledge, published in December 2006 it won the Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association for the outstanding reference work of 2006.
Berenbaum co-produced One Survivor Remembers: The Gerda Weissmann Klein Story, a film which was recognized with an Academy award, an Emmy Award and the Cable Ace Award. He was the chief historical consultant for Last Days, which also won an Academy Award in 1998. In 2001, Berenbaum was historical consultant for the History Channel's The Holocaust: The Untold Story, which won the CINE Golden Eagle Award and a Silver Medal at the US International Film and Video Festival. He was also Executive Producer of a film entitled Desperate Hours on the Holocaust in Turkey and on "About Face: The Story of The Jewish Refugee Soldiers of WWII". Berenbaum was executive producer of Swimming in Auschwitz and was a consultant for Defiance and Uprising, among other Holocaust-related films and documentaries.
Berenbaum is married to Melissa Patack Berenbaum, and is the father of four children.
ADL National Youth Leadership Mission Delegates
Warren Easton High School
- Bernell Elzey, Jr.
- Jeremy McKendall
- Jeremy Solomon
St. Martin’s Episcopal
- Chloe George
- Katherine Honeywell
- Conway Solomon
- Ambika Subramaniam
Haynes
- Nicholas James May
- Chaviva Sands
Newman
- Adele Krieger
- Eli Murov
Patrick Taylor Science/Tech Academy
- Josh Tarr
De La Salle
- Javon Bracy
McGhee
- Emily Good
Grace King
- Sara Marves
St. Mary’s Academy
- Thu Vo
Lusher
- Bilia Meekers
- Sierra Livious
Archbishop Chapelle
- Emily Radcliffe
Brother Martin
- Austin Labry
Third Annual Educator of the Year
Educator of the Year Award Presented to Eileen Harbison and Archbishop Chapelle High School
Thank you to the Committee
| Richard Cahn, Chair | Anne Levy |
| Jacqueline Ames | Sandy Levy |
| Ben Berman | Ruth Loeffeholz |
| Jeanine Burk | John Menszer |
| Vivian Cahn | Ann Rabin |
| Felicia Fuksman | Joseph Sher |
| Margot Garon | Karen & Leopold Sher |
| Cathy Glaser | Cantor Billy Tiep |
| Harvey Herstein | Sarah Weil |
| Betty Lazarus | Barri Bronston |
For more information contact Debbie Pesses, Jewish Enrichment Director, at 504.897.0143 - debbie@nojcc.org.
Some History...
During World War II, the Germans, specifically the Nazis exterminated 11 million individuals, including over 1.5 million children. Of these 11 million, many were political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma Gypsies, non-heterosexuals, and anyone who was mentally or physically handicapped. They were considered inferior and in the Nazi’s minds did not meet their criteria of an acceptable human being. Of this 11 million, 6 million Jews were exterminated, 1.5 million of them children, because the Nazis’ believed that Jews and their religion made them inferior.
In March 2007, the United Nations designated January 27 as a worldwide day of commemorance for the victims of the Holocaust, citing that the world must know and remember what happened. In addition, the Jewish community instituted a Jewish holy day to remember the Holocaust, the Hebrew day of the 27th of Nissan. This day was chosen because it represented a time period right after the Passover, when the Israelites became a people after they were freed in Egypt, and the time period in which the Warsaw Ghetto had its uprising. It usually occurs in late April or early May.
This Day – Yom Hashoah – which literally means “Day of the Catastrophe” is considered a day of Remembrance, where local Survivors and the Jewish community come together to remember loved ones lost, honor the Survivors, and pay tribute to individuals who keep the memory of the atrocities foremost in people’s minds to ensure such atrocities will never happen again. Special memorial prayers (Yizkor) are recited.
