Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration set for Sunday at Temple Israel of Riverhead

Temple Israel of Riverhead will host a Holocaust Remembrance Day program on Sunday, May 1, featuring guest speakers Felice Katz of the Holocaust Tolerance & Memorial Center of Glen Cove and Father Bohdan Hedz of St.John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Riverhead.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, called Yom HaShoah in Hebrew, marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising on April 19, 1943.

The uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. About 700 Jewish insurgents in the ghetto fought the deportation efforts. It was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II. By May 16, the Germans had crushed the uprising and deported surviving ghetto residents to concentration camps and killing centers.

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the SS and police deported approximately 42,000 Warsaw ghetto survivors who were captured during the uprising. These prisoners were sent to the forced-labor camps and concentration camp. Most of them would be murdered at these camps in November 1943 in a two-day shooting operation known as Operation Harvest Festival (Erntefest). At least 7,000 Jews died fighting or in hiding in the ghetto. (For more information about the uprising and remembrance days, visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website.)

April 19 corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar and this year falls on Thursday, April 28. In the United States, Holocaust Days of Remembrance run from the Sunday before Yom Hashoah (April 24 this year) through the Sunday after, which this year is May 1.

This year is the first time since before the pandemic that Temple Israel will commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day with a ceremony , said Linda Prizer, one of the event organizers.

“The idea is to prevent the same thing from happening again,” Prizer said. “Never forget. Because if we forget we are doomed to repeat it,” she said.

Prizer pointed to the war in Ukraine as evidence of that thesis. “Here’s genocide. We don’t learn from our mistakes.”

Katz, one of the featured speakers Sunday, is someone Prizer has known since childhood. Katz’s mother, the late Etunia Bauer Katz, a Holocaust survivor, was the author of the book “Our Tomorrows Never Came.”

Etunia Bauer Katz, a native of Poland in an area that is now part of Ukraine, witnessed her entire family murdered by Nazis. Alone, she hid for months behind a false wall in a house occupied by German soldiers. She published her memoir in 2000.

“We learned not to cry, but we also learned not to forget. We cannot forget. We have six million reasons to remember,” she said.

Her eldest daughter, Felice, joined her when she spoke to students and has continued sharing her story after her mother’s death in 2018.

Sunday’s event begins at 1 p.m. at Temple Israel, located at 490 Northville Turnpike (at the corner of Ostrander Avenue.)

Refreshments will be served following the program.

The event will be held in-person and via Zoom. RSVP to the temple office by noon on Friday, April 29. Advance reservations and proof of vaccination are required.