New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and other local officials joined members of the Jewish community Friday for a ceremony recognizing this coming Monday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“We say never again – never again shall we allow such bigotry to happen to the Jewish people or to any group of people,” Elicker said at the Chapel Haven Schleifer Center, an independent living nonprofit for adults with disabilities. “And we consistently say hate has no home in New Haven.”
Attendees lit Yahrzeit memorial candles in honor of the victims of the Holocaust, and more than two dozen buildings around New Haven and Connecticut were to be lit up yellow to join in the commemoration.
The day of remembrance falls each year on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Harriet Schleifer, chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a parent of a Chapel Haven participant, noted that this year marks 80 years since the camp was liberated.
“It’s our 80th year,” Schleifer said. “It is the commemoration of Auschwitz, but it is the liberation as a sign of all the other camps that were across Europe, in Africa, in other parts of the world.”
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005. In addition to remembering victims of Nazism, the adopted resolution is also meant to “support the development of educational programs to remember the Holocaust and to prevent further genocide.”
Fay Sheppard is the child of Holocaust survivors. She shared what that identity means to her.
“They say that we have nightmares that are not our own, and we have memories that we have never experienced,” Sheppard said. “Because as a child of survivors, you have a type of fear and a type of anxiety every time there’s a knock on the door. Because as my mother used to say, ‘Could be the Nazis knocking on the door.’”
Sheppard said New Haven plays a special role in the lives of survivors and descendants, as exemplified by the dedicated efforts that went into the creation of its Holocaust memorial on Whalley Avenue.
“The entire community stands with us in unison,” Sheppard said. “We all remember what can happen when man forgets his humanity. And we thank you, all of you, for what you have done and for standing with us. Never forget.”
