Yiddishkayt Initiative Announces Multi-Event Commemoration for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

On such a somber and momentous occasion as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), Yiddishkayt Initiative founder and CEO Avi Hoffman feels its important for the organization to be part of the education of the community related to keeping the remembrance of The Holocaust and the lessons to be learned from it alive.

Therefore, YI Love Jewish will present its first-ever Virtual YI Remembers - A Holocaust Commemoration to recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day this January 27.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is designated by the United Nations General Assembly to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. On this annual day of commemoration, the United Nations urges every member-state to "honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism by developing educational programs to help prevent future genocides."

"We have partnered with academic institutions and other Jewish organizations to provide programming to the broader community with our YI Remembers... program," Hoffman said. "As a child of Holocaust survivors myself, I wanted our organization to be part of the commemoration of the UN's International Holocaust Remembrance Day as well as Yom HaShoah, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, in April."

YI Remembers... Virtual commemoration of the UN's International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 will consist of three programs:

• "Remembering Kristallnacht" at 2 p.m.

• "A Lucky Guy" - A New Play Reading at 5 p.m.

• "God and the Holocaust: Commemoration Concert" at 8 p.m.

"Remembering Kristallnacht" is a historical, artistic program to remembering the horrific night of November 9-10, 1938, and the violence committed by the Nazis throughout Germany and Austria against Jews and their property, which initiated the horrors of Nazi Germany and culminated in concentration camps across Europe.

"Remembering Kristallnacht" will commemorate the horrific events of 1938, and will feature the art of Martin Levin, an accomplished artist whose intricately-detailed miniature buildings are world-renowned. Levin is meticulously recreating many of the exterior features of the Jewish synagogues destroyed in Germany and Austria on Kristallnacht.

Levin has said this is his own personal "mitzvah" ("duty") to ensure that those who died in the Holocaust will not be forgotten.

Joining the "Remembering Kristallnacht" program will be Robert Watson, the world-renowned, award-winning author, professor, historian and analyst for numerous national media outlets. Watson, a professor of American Studies at Lynn University in Boca Raton, has published three dozen books on history and politics and is considered one of the leading history scholars in the United States.

"A Lucky Guy" will be a play reading by Tony Award-nominated director and actress Eleanor Reissa and starring Avi Hoffman and a national cast of actors. The play is part of a published anthology by Reissa encompassing six decades of modern Jewish life in the United States, exploring the subtle and not-so-subtle effects of a post-Holocaust world on a modern American woman.. Her plays are bound together by a unique slant toward life, death, God and love, depicting what is humanly and inhumanly possible. The Chicago Tribune review read: "profoundly, beautifully moving ... a life-affirming dance."

Beyond her work as an author, Reissa is also a singer performing around the world solo and with Grammy Award winning Klezmer greats Frank London and The Klezmatics.

"God and the Holocaust: A Commemoration Concert" Featuring the talents of Maestro Aaron Kula and his Klezmer Company Jazz Orchestra and Avi Hoffman - This concert is focused upon the Jewish world in wartime Europe and the relationship between Jews and God in Holocaust literature and music -- as depicted in the writings and songs of the great Yiddish poets, composers and writers.

This performance is part of YI's Klezmer in Quarantine series and their steadfast commitment to applying the lessons of the Holocaust to today's world.

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