Today, Lawrentians commemorate Yom Ha Shoah/Holocaust Memorial Day. Rabbi Lauren Levy shared with the School community that, during the Holocaust, over 11 million people were murdered, six million of them Jews.

On this day each year in Israel, she explained, “a siren is blown for two minutes at 10 a.m. and people stand in memory of those massacred. They stop their cars and get out and stand next to them (even on highways), they stand on streets and in classrooms, in shops - wherever they are when the siren starts.”

To further educate students about the Holocaust, Lawrentians were invited earlier this week to attend a private, live, virtual tour of Auschwitz, the infamous concentration and death camp in Poland. The tour, a project of the Center for Holocaust Education of the East Valley JCC, was led by Jerzy Wojcik, a Polish scholar.

“It’s incredibly scary that anti-Semitism is growing so rapidly in our world,” said Levy. “At Lawrenceville, we need to address this by viewing and interacting with this important part of world history, the Holocaust, through the virtual tour.”

Photo credit: Candles in the U.S. Holocaust Museum Hall of Remembrance/Credit: U.S. Holocaust Museum

For additional information, please contact Lisa M. Gillard, director of public relations, at lgillard@lawrenceville.org.