Holocaust Remembrance Day: Let Us Remember Together

Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins this year Wednesday evening, April 15, and marks 70 years since the liberation of Jews from the Nazi Death Camps and the end of the Holocaust.

Each year, Congregation Or Torah in Skokie, Illinois commemorates Yom HaShoah, remembering the victims, and paying tribute to the survivors. It is most memorable— an evening of prayer and testimony, perpetuating the memory of the six million who were murdered by the Nazis, while giving testimony to the strength and the continuity of the Jewish people.

Please join me this Wednesday evening at Congregation Or Torah at 3800 West Dempster in Skokie, Illinois.

Mincha begins at 7:20 pm followed by Maariv. The commemoration program begins at 8:00 pm.

Let us explore and recapture a picture of the vibrant, colorful Eastern European Jewish culture prior to the Holocaust as well as the history during the Holocaust, through the lens of food from my book, Food, Family and Tradition. Using stories and recipes from the book, we can retrace milestones in the life journey of my parents, Sandor z”l and Margit Kirsche. Their memories are inseparable from the traditional dishes prepared in their family homes in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I am also able to share some of my father’s reflections on his experience during the Holocaust through excerpts from his as-yet unpublished autobiography.

I will be interviewing my mother, Mrs. Margit Kirsche, about her life in Hungary prior to the Holocaust, her life in the Ghetto and in Auschwitz and Torgau (a sub camp of Buchenwald) and her liberation on April 27, 1945. Her life gives testimony to the courage of all those who lived through the Holocaust, and to the strength and resilience of the Survivors, who began life again.

Zachor. Let us remember together.