Yom Hashoah Memorial Program tonight

By ALAN SMASON

Tonight’s eighth annual community wide Holocaust Memorial Program at the Uptown Jewish Community Center, 5342 St. Charles Avenue, begins at 7:00 p.m.

Memorial candles representing those lost in the Shoah from Yom Hashoah 2012. (Photo by Alan Smason)

The Holocaust Memorial Program, put on by the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial Committee, through the auspices of the Jewish Community Center in the Mintz Auditorium. JCC Director of Jewish Life Liba Kornfeld is in charge of administering the program for the Holocaust Memorial Committee.

The keynote speaker will be Philip Bialowitz, one of only seven survivors of the Sobribor revolt at the Nazi death camp. Bialowitz, who was 17 at the time of the revolt, joined with his brother and others to overwhelm the guards and helped free 200 of the 600 prisoners housed there. It is estimated that 250,000 people perished at the hands of the Nazi captors there in the period it operated between 1942 and 1943.

Bialowitz, now 88, will be retelling his story as written in his memoir “A Promise at Sobribor: A Jewish Boy’s Story of Revolt and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland.” He will be signing copies of the book after the program ends.

The program will also spotlight the Anti-Defamation League’s ninth annual presentation of the Educator of the Year Award to Tony Behan, a religion and theology teacher at nearby De La Salle High School. Behan will be recognized for his work in incorporating the study of the Holocaust into his students’ curriculum.

The ADL’s board president Betty Lazarus will also introduce the ten high school delegates from across the area’s public, private and parochial high schools who participated in the Donald R. Mintz Youth Leadership Mission to Washington, D.C. It is expected that one of their numbers will discuss what it was like to journey to Washington and to visit sites in the nation’s capital including the National Holocaust Museum.

Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra assistant principal cellist Daniel Lelchuk will open the program with “Prayer” from Ernest Bloch’s “Jewish Life.” Pianist Diana Aldos will accompany him.

The march of the survivors will commence with a procession of all living Holocaust survivors, their offspring and grandchildren. Rabbi David Posternock of Congregation Beth Israel will lead the audience in the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Hatikvah.”

Survivor Joseph Sher, the oldest of the New Orleans Jewish community’s survivors is expected to take part in the program. In the past he has read the names of those survivors who have passed away in addition to reciting the Kaddish as a memorial prayer for the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Following the program, light refreshments will be served.