“Remembering for the Future: Community-Wide Yom HaShoah Commemoration,” a ceremony honoring the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, will be held Sunday at Pan Pacific Park.
The ceremony will run from 2-3:30 p.m. and include music and survivor testimonies. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is among the scheduled speakers.
The organizing committee includes the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Family Service, Jewish World Watch, Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Museum of Tolerance and several synagogues.
Under a 1953 law passed by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is annually observed on the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, which begins at sundown Wednesday and ends at sundown Thursday.
President Donald Trump issued a proclamation Friday declaring Sunday through next Sunday “Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust,” and calling for “appropriate study, prayers and commemoration, and to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution by remembering the lessons of this atrocity so that it is never repeated.”
“During this week of solemn remembrance, we honor the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were brutally murdered by the Nazi regime,” Trump wrote in his proclamation.
“We also remember the Roma and Sinti, persons with disabilities, Poles and Slavic ethnic groups, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses and persons who were targeted based on their sexual orientation, all of whom were targeted and killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.
“As we honor the victims of the Holocaust, we also celebrate the survivors and daring rescuers who overcame horrific injustices, endless nights of darkness, and daunting odds. Survivors of the Holocaust endured firsthand hatred and evil that sought to extinguish human life, dignity, and freedom.
“When the heroic American and Allied forces liberated them, the survivors had every right to sorrow and bitterness, but instead, they inspired all of humanity with their unbreakable spirit and the prevailing power of hope and forgiveness over horror and hatred.”