Thank you all for being here. This is perhaps the most important program of the year for the Alliance. The Yom Hashoah committee works for an entire year to present this commemoration for the community. They work so hard with one clear vision in mind; to make sure that the young people in our community remember how human beings, if not checked by people of good will, can become beasts, violent and murderous. We call upon our young people to remember because there is great and enduring power in memory. To remember evil is to work tirelessly to prevent it from happening again. To forget the past is to invite the horrors of the past into the present yet again. You and I and our children after us, must continue to stand strong against evil as we remember. That is our job tonight and throughout the year and throughout our lives. Zachor, lo tishkach: remember, do not forget.

Our Yom Hashoah committee today feels a sense of urgency not felt so much in previous years. The urgency is that we are slowly losing the generation of the survivors who have given us first hand reports about the Shoah. That truth has been brought home to us with great poignancy this past year as we lost our teacher and friend, Jack Goldman. Jack was the inspiration for the Yom Hashoah Committee at the HEA since its founding. He worked with the committee every year sharing his personal experience in the Shoah. For those who didn’t know Jack well, I would like to say just a few words about his life. Jack Goldman was born in Mannheim, Germany: on Erev Yom Kippur, 1923. He spent his early years in Mannheim growing up with his sisters, Terry and Debby. When the Nazis came, his sisters were able to escape on the Kindertransport. They found their way to America to survive the war.

But Jack was arrested by the Nazis in 1938.

He was first brought to a prison in Berlin and then transferred to Sachsenhausen. He then went to Dachau and later to Auschwitz. In 1945, he was forced into a death march out of Auschwitz and he collapsed from typhoid just before reaching Dachau for a second time. His clothing was in tatters, no shoes on his feet. He somehow survived and lived to see the American army liberate the camp.

Jack was good with languages and knew English. When he regained his strength, he began to work for the American army: he was just 22 years old. After the war, he was able to start his life again. He married Margot in 1952 and they were married 57 years. Together they raised four loving children: and received endless naches from their 8 grandchildren. What was so remarkable about Jack is that he picked his life again, after great tragedy and strife, and went on to live a good life and become a leader in our community: teaching us all and our children and grandchildren, in the Jewish community as well as in the general community about the Shoah. He taught us all about our responsibility to ourselves, to the State of Israel and to the world to never let it happen again. We dedicate this evening’s program and all the work that we do to teach the Shoah, to our friend, teacher and mentor, Jack Goldman.

We thank all the people on the Shoah committee that have worked so hard to make this presentation to us tonight. We thank all the participants in the program, as well, for their involvement in this important work. And in particular, we thank DU Hillel for supporting our program tonight from a grant provided by Hedy Mantel (Tessler) in memory of her parents.

Welcome to you all again and may we to continue to focus our attention on the lessons of the Shoah; zachor, lo tishcach: remember and never forget.