Central Florida’s Jewish community is remembering Holocaust victims with a service at the Congregation of Reform Judaism in Orlando. The commemoration tonight includes readings from the biographies of Central Florida Holocaust survivors, and a dramatic poetry reading by Winter Park High School students.
Yom HaShoah is Israel’s day to commemorate the approximately six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust and to pay tribute to the Jewish resistance and the people who helped rescue Jews from Nazi Germany.
Pam Cantor, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center, said the lessons of the Holocaust are more relevant now than ever.
“It causes me great distress when I see the political discourse that is going on in this country, when I see the rise of anti-Semitism, when I see the rise in Islamophobia, and all of the racism and prejudice that we’re seeing today,” said Cantor.
The memorial falls just days after a 19 year old man shot a worshipper to death and injured three others at the Poway Synagogue in California.
Cantor said she never expected to see anti-Semitism rise to the level it has today.
“When the first question you ask is, I wonder if they had armed security at the synagogue, or I wonder if they had armed security at the church, how sad is it that, that in 2019 we’re even asking those questions? That we feel that in order to go to a place of worship, we have to have protection.”