Local synagogues mark Yom HaShoah

Alex Konstantyn, who survived the Holocaust by hiding out in the Polish countryside, at the East Meadow Jewish Center’s Yom HaShoah service on April 15.

Nicole Monteleone/Herald

Student participation was an essential part of local services. Above, Rebecca Silverman, of EMJC’s Hebrew School chorus, sang to hundreds in attendance.

Nicole Monteleone/Herald

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Synagogues across the world marked Yom HaShoah last week, also known as Holocaust Memorial Day, and local synagogues in East Meadow were no exception.

A big focus in local ceremonies was student participation. At the East Meadow Jewish Center, which held its Yom HaShoah service on April 15, Rabbi Ronald Androphy said the synagogue’s Hebrew School chorus played an integral part of the services.

Androphy emphasized that is as important as ever for students to learn about the Holocaust, which resulted in the death of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazi regime in Germany between 1933 and 1945. “A lot of what we did was to imply that while the generation of survivors is at this point diminishing,” he said. “It’s up to all of us, the second, third and fourth generation to remember.”

Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum, the spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El, said their seventh-grade Hebrew school students devote a unit of study to learning about heroes of the Holocaust. At the synagogue’s Yom HaShoah service on April 16, the students shared their research at the evening’s conclusion. “They showed that even in the midst of difficulty and of overwhelming odds,” said Bar-Nahum, who was born in Israel. “They still stood up for what was right and what they believed in.”

The rabbis emphasized that the day of commemoration is not just about remembering the Holocaust, but all sectarian violence that has happened — and continues to happen — worldwide. “The world still has to be vigilant concerning not just anti-Semitism,” Androphy said, “but discrimination, repression and the attempted elimination of various ethnic and religious groups.”

Androphy pointed to the hostage crisis at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, as well as the attacks at Garissa University in Kenya in early April, where shooters who identify with Al-Qaeda specifically targeted Christian students, as recent examples.