Annual Interfaith Holocaust Program Features Renowned Survivors

A Tri-Cities Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Service will take place on Monday, April 12, 2010, 7:00 PM, at Congregation Brith Achim in Petersburg, 314 South Boulevard, Petersburg (next door to Walnut Hill Baptist Church). The service is open to the public and everyone is encouraged to attend.

This annual event is sponsored by the Walnut Hill Area Churches and Synagogue Organization (WHACSO) in conjunction with the U.S. Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust and the Virginia Holocaust Museum. We join people of all faiths to take a stand against hate, bigotry, and apathy, by participating in this special event. Apathy, too, is a major evil in our society. As living witnesses begin to fade, all people should take advantage of this opportunity!

This year two local survivors will present a moving personal witness. Alan Zimm was born in Kolo, Poland, in 1920. In 1942 was deported to the Lodz ghetto, where he distributed food. In 1944 he was forced to unload trainloads of coal and munitions in Czestochowa and later transferred to Buchenwald. In 1945 he was sent to the Dora-Mittelbau camp, where he met Dr. Werner von Braun while working in the secret underground rocket factory, whose horrors have been described in Yves Béon’s memoir, Planet Dora. As the American army advanced, the inmates were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where British forces liberated them in April. Halina Drexler Zimm was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1927. She survived the Holocaust by masquerading as a Christian in Warsaw until the Soviet army arrived in 1945.

In a tribute to the world that was destroyed in the Holocaust, Drs. Richard Schwartz and David Shaffer-Gottschalk of Virginia State University will play selections of Eastern European Jewish klezmer music in a Prelude beginning at 7:00 PM.

For further information contact Rabbi Dennis Beck-Berman at BrithAchim.com or (804) 732-3968.