Frydenberg to speak on Yom Hashoah
JOSH Frydenberg will be the keynote speaker at the NSW community’s major Yom Hashoah ceremony next month, which marks 70 years since the end of the Holocaust.
Earlier this year the Assistant Treasurer travelled to the commemoration at Auschwitz and visited the sites where two of his grandparents and three of his aunts were killed.
He will speak at the event to be held at City Recital Hall, Angel Place, on Wednesday, April 15 at 7.30pm.
Organised by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies (JBOD), it will include the presentation of a Righteous Among the Nations award to family members of an individual who helped Jews during the Shoah, and a performance by a combined school choir under the direction of Dr Joseph Toltz.
“More than ever this year, it is important that members of the community turn out in significant numbers,” JBOD CEO Vic Alhadeff said. “The fact that it is the 70th anniversary since liberation, the fact that the number of survivors is sadly dwindling, the fact that the imperative to emphasise and impart the lessons of where racial hatred can lead is today greater than ever.”
Shoah Foundation executive director Stephen Smith said the impetus has begun to shift. “Those who lived through the Holocaust have carried the burden of remembering long enough. It is now up to their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to lift the weight off their shoulders.”
To mark 70 years since liberation, JBOD recently launched an initiative called “Their names survive” – a portal for the compilation of names and stories belonging to those who survived the Holocaust and migrated to Australia.
The individual stories are uploaded onto JBOD’s Facebook page and will be featured at the communal commemoration event.
“As we move further from the darkest times in our history, the imperative of focusing on the transmission of narratives between survivors and their descendants is ever greater,” Alhadeff said. “The role of Gen3 is ever more important, and it is they who will be on the front line against intolerance, racism and hatred.”
For more information, call (02) 9360 1600.
EVAN ZLATKIS
Josh Frydenberg at Auschwitz.
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