BOCA RATON, Fla. — One day before Holocaust Remembrance Day, members of B'nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton gathered Sunday in Boca Raton to honor those who went through one of the darkest periods of history.
The event included a procession of survivors, both first-hand, as well as second- and third-generation survivors of the Holocaust.
It also included a keynote speaker who focused on the importance of keeping their legacy and history alive.
And there were a prayer, and words of wisdom and reflection about the Holocaust and those who were lost during that time.
WPTV spoke to a woman whose mother survived the Holocaust and the service's rabbi about the importance of keeping the message alive.
“Well, there will be a time when there’s no survivors and therefore our stories have to be retold," Lynn Graber, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, said.
Evan Susman, the assistant rabbi at B'nai Torah, said: "It makes me feel good, it makes me feel proud to have organizations and community members dedicated to continue on these stories. They’re really only archived in Israel and some parts of the United States but it’s really for us to educate the entire world on the Holocaust so everyone can know the atrocities and horrors that happened.”
In all there were 25 survivors alongside liberators and family members.
Holocaust Remembrance Day officially starts Monday night and ends Tuesday night.
Holocaust, which is of Greek origin meaning “burnt offering” was "Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and machinelike murder of approximately six million European Jews and at least five million Soviet prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and other victims," according to the National World II Museum in New Orleans.
