Join us on Sunday, April 23rd at 8pm for a Yom HaShoah Commemoration Program that will include 3 short clips from the Yad Vashem Archives.

See below for a description of the clips to be shown.

Ma'ariv will begin promptly at 9pm.

Clip 1: "Glimpses of Jewish Life Before the Holocaust"

On the eve of WWII, the interwar Jewish world was creative and complex, a rich mosaic, full of change and hope for the future. Within a decade, most of Europe would be conquered by Nazi Germany. By 1945 two out of every three of these Jews were silenced forever. The sights and sounds of this video are those of the Jews of Europe before the Holocaust. In their own words, through their diaries, letters and notebooks, and through their family films.

Clip 2: "The Story of the Jewish Community of Bratislava"

Bratislava, Slovakia On the eve of the Holocaust the Jewish community in Bratislava was the largest Jewish community in Slovakia; it was a Jewish religious and political center, and home to the renowned Pressburg Yeshiva as well as the Zionist Organization of Slovakia. In 1930 over 15,000 Jews lived in the city, constituting some 12 percent of the population. Following the creation of an independent Slovak State in March 1939, the Jews of Bratislava were subjected to discriminatory practices and persecution. By the 1st of March 1942, nearly half of the city’s Jews had been evicted, and dispersed in smaller towns across the country. During 1942 many of the Jews of Bratislava were deported to the death camps in Poland. During the war the city was home to the Bratislava Working Group, which was devoted to rescuing Jews. The group’s efforts, however, came to naught and most Slovakian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. This is the story of the Jewish community of Bratislava.

Clip 3: "The Auschwitz Albums"

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest extermination center created by the Nazis. It has become the symbol of the Holocaust and of willful radical evil in our time. The album you will see presented here is known as the Auschwitz Album and it is the only surviving visual evidence of the process leading to mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the photos we see the men, women and children step out of the overcrowded train, traumatized and fearful after their horrendous journey. They have no clue that they have just been delivered to a death factory and that few of them will survive.