MCC Daily Tribune

Hold on to Hope: HGHRP's 33rd Annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration

Please join us on Wednesday, April 19th, for the HGHRP's 33rd Annual Yom HaShoah commemoration events. This year we are holding on to hope and focusing on resistance in the face of hate.

• In the morning, there will be an opening ceremony in the Atrium at 9:30 am, followed by the Calling of the Names and Candle Lighting from 10:00 am to 2:00pm.

Throughout the day on Wednesday, April 19th, come watch and listen as local Holocaust survivors tell their stories. The opportunity to do so becomes ever rarer with the passing of time.

11:00 AM Sam Rind, Monroe B
Sam is a child survivor of the Holocaust. Born near Lublin, Poland in 1937, Sam’s family was in various ghettos and forced labor camps where Sam’s father was killed for the leather jacket on his back. Sam also witnessed his younger brother being killed in his mother’s arms by a Nazi guard. He and his mother eventually escaped to the Ukrainian ghetto of Szmerinka to be with other relatives. Sam had to dress as a girl to do this. At the end of the war, they returned to Poland to find relatives. Finding none, they formed a little kibbutz with other Jewish survivors but eventually wanted to leave because of continued anti-Semitism. They were not permitted entry to the United States where Sam’s uncle lived so they went to Bolivia to be with another one of Sam’s uncles. In 1960, Sam was able to come to the U.S. to attend college in Buffalo.  He became an optician and is still in this profession today.

1:00 PM Warren Heilbronner, Monroe B
Warren was a young child living comfortably with his parents and brother in Stuttgart, Germany until Kristallnacht, when the Gestapo took his father and grandfather to Dachau.  The only way out of Dachau was to get an exit Visa and the only way to get that was to have a sponsor in another country. Warren’s uncle in the U.S. became their sponsor but the family had to overcome many obstacles, including officials who blackmailed them for money they didn’t have.  Then, when they finally got the necessary papers, they learned their sponsor had died and they had to bluff the U.S. consulate into believing they still had a living sponsor. They settled in Perry, New York where his father could find work in a textile factory. As a family from Germany, moving to a rural area on the eve of World War II, the Heilbronners continued to experience discrimination. Warren’s early experience with how a free society can become a dictatorship had a deep impact on his life and he became a lawyer and settled in Rochester, N.Y.

Chloe Vazzana
Office of Student Life & Leadership Dev.
04/18/2023