Michael Dobkowski

How can we best honor our survivors of the Holocaust and their experiences going forward? How do we ensure that the lessons learned from their testimony continue to resonate over time? This is the topic to be addressed at our annual community commemoration of Yom HaShoah, the time set aside to remember those who perished during the Holocaust, on Monday, April 20th. The Center for Holocaust Awareness & Information (CHAI) of the Federation welcomes all to “Remembrance, Hope and Responsibility: Honoring Survivors into the Future” taking place at 7:00 PM at the JCC, 1200 Edgewood Avenue. It is free and open to the community.

Michael Dobkowski, author of The Politics of Indifference: Documentary History of Holocaust Victims in America (1982), and The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism (1979) will deliver the keynote address. As professor of Religious Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a group leader of the student March of Remembrance and Hope and the child of Holocaust survivors, Professor Dobkowski is uniquely qualified to address the legacy of the Holocaust and the responsibility of carrying forth its lessons into the future. One of Michael's students, Kara Miller, who was a participant on the 2008 March of Remembrance and Hope, will offer reflections on the impact of this journey for college students to the sites of Nazi atrocities.

Sam Rind, a child survivor of the Holocaust, will deliver the Survivor’s Reflection. A child survivor of the Holocaust, Sam was born near Lublin, Poland in 1937. His family was in various ghettos and forced labor camps. His father was killed for the leather jacket on his back. Sam also witnessed his younger brother being killed in his mother’s arms by a Ukrainian guard. He and his mother eventually escaped - Sam had to dress as a girl to do this - to the Ukrainian ghetto of Szmerinka. Sam survived the war and many other impediments before finally immigrating to the US in 1959.

Rabbi Alan Katz and Rabbi Shaya Kilimnick will officiate and Dr. Rabbi Sandra Katz will lead a prayer for peace. Temple Sinai’s Sason Youth Choir, led by Susan Krasner, will lead the singing of the Partisan’s Hymn and Hatikvah. Anna Clement, a music education major at Nazareth College and another participant on the 2008 March of Remembrance and Hope, will accompany the choir and candle lighting ceremony on violin.

About the March of Remembrance and Hope

March of Remembrance & Hope 2008

The March of Remembrance and Hope serves to teach college students of different religious and ethnic backgrounds about the dangers of intolerance through study of the Holocaust. In 2008, college students from Nazareth and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, accompanied by Holocaust survivors, visited the once-thriving Jewish cultural centers of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin, Poland. They walked through the former death camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, witnessing the gas chambers and crematoria where millions of people were murdered.

An exhibit of student writings, photographs and art work from the March of Remembrance and Hope and the Federation’s teen Zikaron Trip of Remembrance to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum will be on display outside the JCC’s auditorium.

Learn more about CHAI, the Center for Holocaust Awareness & Information.