Friedberg JCC hosts Yom Hashoah event

The Friedberg JCC and the Jewish Community Council of Oceanside co-hosted their annual Holocaust commemoration on May 6, bringing community members together to honor the memory of the victims.

The council’s Yom Hashoah event invited people from different backgrounds in the Jewish community, as well as those interested in Jewish traditions, to commemorate the Holocaust. On Yom Hashoah six candles are lit to commemorate 6 million Jews that were murdered in the Holocaust. This year, as a result of the ongoing war in Israel, a seventh candle was lit.

Each year, the event features speakers with compelling personal stories related to the Holocaust. Oceanside resident Monte Leeper presented the story of how his father, Stanley, a Jewish soldier in World War II, went AWOL at the end of the war and saved the lives of two concentration camp inmates.

In addition to Leeper’s presentation, Jerich resident Judy Cooperman’s unique exhibit of photographic art, “Memories and Missing Memories,” was inspired by her need to counter today’s rising antisemitism and served as a tribute to her mother, Relly Roth, a Holocaust survivor.