top of page

Asset 6.png

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Educating and strengthening the community, International Holocaust Remembrance Day provides an opportunity for education and remembrance in order to instill the lessons of the past for future generations so that “Never Again” becomes a reality for all peoples. This Remembrance Day pays tribute to the men, women, and children who were murdered during the Holocaust and confirms a commitment to bring an end to anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of intolerance still relevant to this day.

Helen Farkas, front and center, sits with Mercy High School students while listening to a guest speaker.

Leading up to the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which featured the Violins of Hope, every student at Mercy High School participated in the creation of a banner to provide a meaningful backdrop for the speakers and musicians. The quote, "In an ugly time, the best protest is beauty," was taken from Dr. James A. Grymes's book, Violins of Hope, which was read by the entire school. Each student reflected about what brought them hope in their own lives, and created personal symbols of hope that they painted onto the banner.

Board member Ashley Travis engages in a Q&A session with speakers Alan Moskin and Carl Wilkens at the 2021 International Holocaust Remembrance Day event. Moskin is a WWII veteran who helped liberate a Nazi concentration camp, and Wilkens was one of the few Westerner eyewitnesses to the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Event attendees view violins that belonged to Jews before and during the Holocaust.
All violins now belong to a private collection owned by violin makers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein.

Guest speaker Assaela Weinstein, wife of luthier Amnon Weinstein, who is the Founder of the Violins of Hope Collection, and daughter to one of three brothers who formed the Bielski brigade in Belarus, introduces the collection at the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day event. In 1941, the Bielski brothers escaped from the Nazis and took refuge in the forest where they organized and led a unit of Jewish partisans to fight German occupiers and rescue Jews from the horrors of the Shoah.

Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan speaks with St. Cecilia School students at the "Voices of the Generations" Holocaust Remembrance Day event.

A close-up on a Star of David decorating one of the violins of hope.

Guest speaker Julie Kohner, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, presents to St. Cecilia students at the "Voices of the Generations" Holocaust Remembrance Day event.

bottom of page