For the first time to date, the Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Campus will host its annual community-wide Yom Hashoah commemoration online at 2 p.m. on April 26 while the museum is closed to the public in accordance with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order.
Also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah is dedicated to recalling the millions of lives lost to Nazi persecution, as well as reflects on the courageous acts of those who resisted the German regime to help save them.
The broadcast will be hosted on the Holocaust Memorial Center’s website. Board member Steven R. Weisberg will offer opening remarks, and Rabbi Yonatan Dahlen and Cantor David Propis of Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Mich., will lead the commemoration.
This year’s program is presented in cooperation with C.H.A.I.M. (Children of Holocaust Survivors Association in Michigan); Hidden Children and Child Survivors Association of Michigan; the Shaarit Haplaytah Organization; and the Program for Holocaust Survivors and Families, a Service of Jewish Senior Life.
The exhibit perpetuates the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished during the years of World War II and the Holocaust, among them 1.5 million Jewish children.
Coordinated by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in consultation with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project offers the opportunity to memorialize Holocaust victims not only as a collective, but as individuals, one at a time, through public recitation of their names on Yom Hashoah.
In preparation for the memorial project, the Holocaust Memorial Center is inviting community members to volunteer their time and record a video of themselves reading names of Holocaust victims, which will be shared on the center’s website and social-media channels. Volunteers, ages 12 and older, can sign up here to participate.
The community will be able to view the Yom Hashoah reading of the names of Holocaust victims on the Holocaust Memorial Center website and on the center’s social-media channels at www.facebook.com/hmczfc and www.instagram.com/holocaustmemorialcenter.
For more information, call 248-553-2400.