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Community members are invited to observe Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Sun., Apr. 19, 1:30 – 6:15 pm, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street. This year’s observance, titled Resilience through Creativity, will include a number of programs focusing on the significant role that art, music, and poetry have played in the lives of those who endured the Holocaust. All of the afternoon’s programs are free and open to the public. The event will also honor the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the end of the Holocaust.
The afternoon will open with the screening of Defiant Requiem, an award-winning documentary about the performances of the Verdi Requiem at Terezin, a concentration camp that housed thousands of musicians, writers, and artists. A series of workshops follow at 3:15 pm. Participants will have the option of attending one of five sessions featuring survivors and other Holocaust authorities, including conductor Murry Sidlin, the creator of Defiant Requiem, and Mira Shelub, author, with Fred Rosenbaum, of the recently published memoir Never the Last Road, an account of her experiences in the Jewish resistance during World War II.
A 5:00 pm memorial service will include a quartet performing Simon Sargon’s composition Shema—excerpts of poems of Primo Levi—and a flute piece by composer Erwin Schulhoff, who died at a Bavarian concentration camp in 1942. The quartet includes members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. The service will also feature a Yiddish song cycle; poetry of resistance and renewal; images from the artists of Terezin; and the Righteous Among the Nations Award, presented by Consul General of Israel Dr. Andy David to Les Besser in honor of his mother, the late Anna (Besser) Valkar, who hid and helped transport Hungarian Jews to safety during World War II.
Beginning at 3:00 pm, there will be a continuous reading of names of those who perished during the Holocaust. If community members would like to have the names of their loved ones who died during the Holocaust included during this reading, please enter their names in this document or call 419-449-1213. (Those who choose to leave a voicemail phone message should make sure to pronounce names clearly and leave a callback number.)
All are welcome to this free, community-wide event for any portion of the afternoon.
The San Francisco observance of Yom HaShoah is presented in partnership by the Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ Holocaust Center, Lehrhaus Judaica, the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, and the Jewish Community Relations Council.