Commemoration events planned

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Jewish Community Relations Council is announcing its annual Holocaust commemoration programs for this spring’s series of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance.

The annual Shoah Memorial Ceremony is scheduled at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Jewish Community Center, 505 Gypsy Lane. The annual memorial ceremony will feature student presentations, Holocaust-inspired readings, historical perspective and a candle-lighting ceremony led by survivors and children of survivors. The ceremony will also pay tribute to American liberators who served during World War II.

The 17th annual Community Holocaust Commemoration event will be at noon Wednesday, in the rotunda of Mahoning County Courthouse. The event will recognize winners of the JCRC’s annual student Holocaust writing contest, the presentation of a Youngstown mayoral proclamation and a memorial candle-lighting ceremony to honor the six million who perished.

A screening of the documentary, “In the Name of their Mothers,” is planned at 1:30 p.m. April 25 p.m. in Youngstown State University’s McKay Auditorium in Beeghly Hall. The film documents how Irena Sendler and her colleagues rescued more than 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. The documentary includes interviews with Sendler and several children whose lives were saved. The screening is co-sponsored by the YSU Center for Judaic and Holocaust Studies and Polish Youngstown.

In commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has set this year’s theme as “Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters.” The theme examines a lesson about the Holocaust – that remembering the past for the sake of the future is an important goal for all. Remembrance establishes an obligation not only to memorialize those who perished, but also to reflect on what American and other GIs did to rescue survivors.

All programs are free and open to the public. The Holocaust Commemoration and Education Task Force, a committee of the JCRC, is chaired by Rabbi Joseph Schonberger and Rochelle Miller, children of Holocaust survivors, and involves numerous survivors, children of survivors and other volunteers in the community. For more information, call JCRC at (330) 746-3251.

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