News

On January 27, official ceremony dedicated to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day was held at Museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine”. This day in 1945, 1st Ukrainian Front troops liberated the prisoners of the largest Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Auschwitz, which became a terrible symbol of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes during World War II. Declaring January 27 the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, UN General Assembly called on member states to develop educational programs for next generations to keep the memory of this tragedy in order to prevent acts of genocide in the future.

In 2011, Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine made a decision on commemorating the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Ukraine on January 27 at the state level.

Six symbolic candles in memory of the six million victims of the Holocaust – men, women, children were lit by Viacheslav Smotkin, Second secretary of Embassy of Israel in Ukeaine, director of the Israeli cultural center, Wolfgang Mösinger, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Donetsk / Dnipro office, Oleh Rostovtsev, Advisor to the Dnipro city mayor, Faina Vahutinskaya, Head of Dnipropetrovsk association of young ghetto prisoners, Raffael Heltzer, regional director of «Sohnut-Ukraine», Dr. Igor Shchupak. Oleksandr Fridkis, Managing Director of Dnipro Jewish Community read a memorial prayer for the victims of the Catastrophe. At the end of the ceremony Mykhaylo Livshits, music teacher of Jewish school №144, sang a song written by a Jewish girl during the Holocaust. Dr. Denys Shatalov, Head of the scientific department of the Holocaust Museum was a moderator of the ceremony.

After the ceremony, presentation of a documentary film «Children of Tehran» was held at the initiative of the Israeli Cultural Center in Dnipro. The film is about an unique story of the rescue of 700 children from the occupied Poland territory and their incredible journey to Palestine in the winter 1943. Today, those «Children of Tehran» more than 80 years old. In the film, they recall their famine life in Samarkand, escape, heroic rescue from Tehran, a trip through the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal during the Nazi bombing, about train trip to the Holy Land, and finally, the peaceful life in Eretz Israel.

• Prev
• Next