Interfaith Holocaust remembrance is set
The South Orange-Maplewood Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Committee will hold its 49th Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Service on Sunday, March 15. The SOMA program, Remember and Tell, co-sponsored by Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ’s Holocaust Council, will begin at 2 p.m., with a march that starts at the Indiana parking lot, corner of Indiana Street and Springfield Avenue in Maplewood. The walk honors the 11 million Holocaust victims and survivors. At 3 p.m., there will be a service and program at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Maplewood.
Eva Wiener, a Holocaust survivor who was 10 months old and youngest child aboard the MS St. Louis, tells the story of her family’s escape from Nazi Germany. Her family was able to relocate to England and eventually moved to Queens.
In 1939, the MS St. Louis carried 937 Jewish refugees out of Germany, steaming toward Havana, where they would be free from Nazi persecution. When they arrived, the Cuban government turned them away, and so did the United States and Canadian governments. They were finally dispersed throughout Europe, where a quarter of them would die in the Holocaust.
Christopher Kaiser, the youth minister at Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church in South Orange, will receive the Sister Rose Thering Holocaust Education award for the many years he has taught young people both from his congregation and outside it about the Holocaust and its lessons.
Participants are encouraged to bring a non-perishable item for the food bank. For information, go to RememberandTell.org.
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