WHAT: The Yom HaShoah Community Holocaust Commemoration will include two keynote talks from Survivor, Janet Applefield, and photographer Richard Wiesel. The Peabody Veterans Council will open the program with the Posting of the Colors. During the ceremony, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will honor the Holocaust survivors, families of late survivors and recognize their Holocaust Legacy Partners who represent them in classrooms and elsewhere. Children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors will join survivors for the traditional Generations Candle-Lighting Ceremony. The Salem State University Community Chorus and Temple Emanu-El’s Jewish Music Neighborhood will perform a selection of songs. Prayers will be led by Congregation Shirat Hayam Cantor Alty Weinreb. The event is free and open to the public.
WHEN: Wednesday, May 1, 2019, 7 pm
WHERE: J. Henry Higgins Middle School | 85 Perkins St, Peabody, MA
WHO: Janet Applefield was only four years old when the German army invaded Poland in 1939. After fleeing to the Soviet Union, a journey that claimed the life of her baby sister, the family returned to Poland. In a short time, they were rounded up, except for Janet who was given to the care of a Polish family, sent to the Krakow ghetto and eventually to the P?aszów concentration camp. Janet's mother was immediately shot in a forest nearby, but her father survived agonizing months of hard labor. Janet Applefield attributes her survival not only to her “Aryan” appearance but also to the kindness of the people who refused to collaborate with the Germans and sheltered her during the war.
Few survived the Holocaust in Poland, fewer still in her home town. Those who returned, faced antisemitism, death threats, and even murder by their former neighbors. As a result, Janet and her father immigrated to the United States in 1947, where she finished school and became a clinical social worker. Today she travels around the Boston area to tell her story and highlight the courage of the selfless few who contributed to her survival.
Richard Wiesel is an Australian based photographer who has an extensive background in marketing and the film industry. Recently, Richard has turned to exploring the use of images in storytelling, especially in the absence of language and documentation. Richard’s Berlin Holocaust Memorial Project includes photographs of victims’ discarded belongings in the German concentration and transitional camps Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück. With extensive contextualization and historical research, the project attempts to “give the silent an opportunity to speak to us once again with collective voices.”
Additional Information
The Israeli Parliament chose the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan as the day to remember the six million Jewish Holocaust victims. It was chosen because on that day in 1943 the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, learning of the German plan to liquidate the Ghetto as a birthday present to Hitler, began their uprisings against the Nazis.
In the United States, the tradition of Holocaust Remembrance week started in 1979 under the directive of President Jimmy Carter when the Senate and Congress recognized the need to acknowledge the memory of the Holocaust and its victims. As a result, Congress created the U.S. Memorial Council and instituted the week of Yom HaShoah as the “Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust.”
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University was formed in 2014 to carry on the mission of the Holocaust Center, Boston North. The Yom Hashoah ceremony continues the tradition started by its founders, Harriet Wacks and Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz.