The 2010 Shoah Commemoration Events were the same yet different, the same but new. The same can be said of our speaker Dr. Miriam Brysk from Ann Arbor Michigan, professor of Microbiology, artist, speaker on the Holocaust and survivor of the ghetto. Miriam’s presentation was different than those we have had in the past because her survival was not only about the ghetto, but also her family’s survival as a part of the partisans in the area and nation we know as Belarus. She held the attention of 130 people attending the 16th Annual Shoah Commemoration Service at Samuel Lutheran Church in downtown Muskegon Michigan as she unfolded her story and that of her family as they faced the tide of Nazi conquest and terror and selection and Einsatzgruppen death squads – a precursor to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka and more in eastern Poland. She addressed the situation through the eyes of a child who experienced the loss of family, selection, escape and survival in the partisan camps which were anything but family friendly and child friendly. She talked about having her sexual identity shielded out of fear of rape; of being left behind because she was a risk to partisans from the Nazi’s seeking them out.
General
2010 Shoah Commemoration and Future Events
Saturday, June 5th, 2010Walk of Names
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010May 23 1:00 pm
What is the Walk of Names?
It is an opportunity to remember the names of some of the 1.5 million children who were murdered by the Nazis.
It is an opportunity to get beyond just the numbers, to speak and hear a name of a child.
It is an opportunity to remember stories and events which unfolded at a time when death engulfed a people.
First time: Commemoration Dinner to close out 2010 Shoah Event
Thursday, February 25th, 2010April 26, 6:30pm at First Evangelical Lutheran Church on Whitehall Road in North Muskegon, the SRCM will hold its first Commemoration Dinner which will be a fund raising affair. The food will be prepared by the West Michigan Lakeshore Student Chef Association and will cater to kosher, vegetarian and general tastes. Agencies, communities of faith, service groups, insitutions and businesses will be sent a letter of invitation to support the event by sponsoring a table.