Holocaust victims to be memorialized on campus
Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah, to be observed by a public reading of the names of Jews killed in the Holocaust
Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day,will be observed on campus again this year with a .
Weather permitting, the reading will take place onThursday, April 24, from10 a.m. until 5 p.m.at theDalton Trumbo Fountain Courtin front of the University Memorial Center.
The event’s organizers encourage the campus and broader communities to participate in the readings. Prospective participants may
The U.S. Congress established the Days of Remembrance in 1980 as the nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1993, leads the nation in observing Days of Remembrance and encourages observances throughout the United States.
What: Public readings on Yom HaShoah
When: Thursday, April 24, from10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Where: Dalton Trumbo Fountain Courtin front of the University Memorial Center.
The main event takes place at the U.S. Capitol, often attended by the U.S. President. In Israel, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah in Hebrew) is a national day of commemoration on which the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are memorialized.
It begins at sunset on the 27th of the month of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish calendar, and ends the following evening, according to the traditional Jewish custom of marking a day. Established in 1953by a law from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, it falls close the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to victims of the Holocaust.
During Yom HaShoah ceremonies in the United States, Israel and elsewhere, people read the names of Jews murdered by the Germans and their allies during the Shoah.
“The events of the Holocaustare given meaning only by remembering the individuals who died during that time,” Rabbi Sharon Sobel writes. “We gather as a community, we remember the names of those who died, and we affirm their lives by how we choose to lead our lives. So, names, indeed, are very powerful. ... we honor those who came before us and those who perished during the Holocaust by giving our names—and their names meaning through ouractions and aspirations and the way we fulfill them.”
The Ҵýƽ event is presented by the Program in Jewish Studies. It is co-sponsored by the Ҵýƽ Department of History, Department of Women and Gender Studies and Center for Humanities and the Arts.
For more information on the Days of Remembrance and Yom HaShoah commemoration,please contact Professor Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, the Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, atthomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.
“In our rapidly changing domestic and global political situation and the various devastating ongoing wars, especially in Israel and Gaza, these commemorations have again taken on yet a different meaning,” Pegelow Kaplan said.
“This event will also once more amount to a small contribution towards addressing charges of antisemitism (‘structural’ or not) that are still leveled against CU not only by right-wing non-Jewish and Jewish groups, but even by officials in or close to the federal government.”
Pegelow Kaplan noted that April 24 is also the anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide, “and we will most certainly mention it and other mass crimes and mass death, especially in Gaza/Israel.”
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