SAN DIEGO (Press Release) – To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, San Diego Jewish Academy students will be spending Thursday, May 5th remembering those who perished in the Holocaust.
Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Between July 22 and September 12, 1942, the German authorities deported or murdered around 300,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. SS and police units deported 265,000 Jews to the Treblinka killing center and 11,580 to forced-labor camps. The Germans and their auxiliaries murdered more than 10,000 Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during the deportation operations.
SDJA’s senior class will not be in attendance as they are now participating in the Academy’s annual Senior Trip to Poland and Israel. This trip – to tour the concentration camps of World War II in Poland and to experience present-day Israel – is seen as the culmination of the SDJA education experience.
The school-wide commemoration has the following schedule
7:55 am – 8:10 am: Commemorative Ceremony. (Upper School Students)
8:00 am – 3:15 pm: Reading of the Names. Upper school students will light a torch and then recite the names of 10,000 children who perished in the Holocaust. Although more than 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, with 1.6 million of them children, there is not enough time in the day to recite all the names. Throughout the day, upper school (grades 6-12) students will stand in memorial and recite a portion of the names.
10:30 am – 11:30 am: Students (Grades 6-11) gather in the SDJA gym for a Yom HaShoah service. Holocaust survivor Rose Schindler will speak.
10:30 am – 11:30 am: 5th Graders will lead a Yom HaShoah service joined by several Holocaust Survivors (whose numbers dwindle each year). A luncheon with 5th graders and survivors will follow.
10:35 am: Siren commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day – A siren will ring around school and you will be asked to pause from your daily activities for a moment of silence in memory of the Six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. In Israel, sirens are sounded throughout the country for two minutes. During this time, people cease from action and stand at attention; cars stop and drivers emerge from them, even on the highways; and the whole country comes to a standstill as people pay silent tribute
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm: Mark James will be speaking to 9th-12th graders about the experiences of his brother who was among 20 children who were experimented on and then murdered just days before the end of the war.
Our younger students will be read stories of tolerance throughout the morning and will also be painting butterflies as part of The Butterfly Project which seeks to create beautiful painted ceramic butterflies to remember the 1.6 million children who died in the Holocaust.