The St. Louis community will mark Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Rememberance Day) with a Commemoration at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 7 at Congregation B’nai Amoona, 324 S. Mason Road. Yom HaShoah memorializes the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. The event, presented by the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center and sponsored by Sara and Leo Wolf, is open to the entire community.

The theme for this year’s program is “Voices from the Holocaust.” The program will feature eyewitness accounts by three survivors, Ben Fainer, Sara Moses and Sara Wolf, and liberator Sanford “Buddy” Lebman. Wolf and Fainer have never spoken at a Yom HaShoah event. Moses was liberated from Bergen Belsen at the age of 7 years.  Survival for such a young child was extremely rare; having her aunt with her in the camps helped Moses survive. Lebman was a soldier in the U.S. Army who entered the Dachau concentration camp two hours after its liberation. The horrors that he witnessed—living skeletons, the remains of unburied victims and the stench of death—remain with him to this day.

“As long as survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust are still part of our community and willing to share their eyewitness testimonies, their voices will continue to be the focus of our annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration,” says Vera Emmons, Chair of the Yom HaShoah Commemoration Committee. “The intention of the Commemoration is to memorialize the victims, honor the survivors and educate the public about this tragic period of history.”

In addition to the testimonies, the Commemoration will include a traditional candle-lighting ceremony, a procession of Torah scrolls rescued from the Holocaust, liturgical readings and prayers, and recognition of the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Music will be performed by Mischa, Tova and Gabriel Braitberg (Elegant Ensembles), who are the son and grandchildren of Survivors, and the B’nai Amoona Zamarim teen chorus.

For more information, contact the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center at 314-442-3714 or email [email protected].