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Holocaust Remembrance Day event held at Pan Pacific Park
Los Angeles Apr 17, 2023
LA Mayor Karen Bass, seventh from left, was among the speakers at the Holocaust Remembrance Day event at Pan Pacific Park. | Photo courtesy of MayorofLA/Twitter
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A communitywide Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration was held Sunday at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles, marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the revolts at the Sobibor and Treblinka death camps.
Speakers included Harry Davids, whose parents were murdered at Sobibor. With the Nazi threat looming, Davids’ parents gave him to the Dutch resistance who placed him with a Protestant family that protected him during World War II. After the war he was reunited with relatives in South Africa.
The keynote address was delivered by Jeffrey Abrams, the Los Angeles regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, who discussed the importance of the organization’s new #LearnToNeverForget campaign, a public awareness and advocacy campaign to improve and expand Holocaust education.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was also among the speakers.
This was the first time the commemoration was held at Pan Pacific Park since 2019. The commemoration was held on a virtual basis in 2020 and 2021 because of restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic and at Holocaust Museum LA in 2022.
The commemoration came one day before the start of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Under a 1953 law passed by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Yom HaShoah is annually observed on the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, which begins at sundown on Monday and ends at sundown on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation on Friday declaring Sunday through April 23 as the “Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust,” and calling “upon the people of the United States to observe this week and pause to remember victims and survivors of the Holocaust.”
“The horrors of the Holocaust are painful to recount — the savage murder of innocent families and the systemic dehumanization of entire populations,” Biden said in the proclamation. “We remember the cries for help that went unanswered and the bright futures cut short.
“We must never look away from the truth of what happened. The rite of remembrance becomes more urgent with each passing year, as fewer survivors remain to share their stories and open our eyes to the harms of unchecked hatred.”
