04/28/2022
Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Join us at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square between 10am and 5pm where we will read aloud the names of the men, women, and children confirmed to have died at the hands of N**i Germany and its European collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
The utter magnitude of the Holocaust shook the very foundations of modern civilization. Moreover, as we sadly know, genocide continues elsewhere in the world to the present day. In our interconnected world, how might remembering this atrocity contribute to our understanding of our responsibility to one another? At the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, we study the Holocaust to examine our connections to each other. We study the Holocaust to sustain the memory of millions whose murders silenced their human voices, in the name of inhuman hatred. Such remembrance bears witness to the destruction of European Jewry and demands that we raise an obligatory moral and political voice against contemporary acts of racism, injustice, and cruelty—wherever and whenever they occur.
On Yom HaShoah – 77 years after the liberation of Jews and others – we hold the memory of six million Jewish victims and millions of other victims of the Holocaust in our hearts. On this day we honor survivors both locally and everywhere on our precious, endangered planet.
