Yom HaShoah in Perth
This year’s Yom Hashoah commemoration in Perth’s Carmel Primary School Hall was well attended by the Perth Jewish community, Survivors, friends and several WA State and Federal politicians, and diplomats.
Rabbi Sholem White
This was certainly an event to show one’s support for the WA Jewish community.
Head of the WA Jewish Community Council, Geoff Midalia welcomed everyone, followed by Rabbi Shalom White who sang the Kel Male Rachamim prayer, and Larry Ellert who recited the Mourners’ Kaddish. Larry’s father, Heiny, a Survivor from Neishtot Tavrig, Lithuania, passed away last year.
This was followed by a minute’s silence.
MC, Ronny Braunstein, focussed on the Wannsee Conference, this year being the 80thanniversary. Ronny highlighted the fact that it took only two hours for the Nazis to devise a plan to seal the fate of six million Jews.
Australia’s 2019 Junior Eurovision representative, Jordan Anthony, sang his song, Fading Numbers.
The Survivor testimony was a video recording of John Chaskiel of Melbourne. John, the fifth of seven children, was ten when the Nazis invaded Poland. He escaped from a labour camp in Poznan, hidden by a priest, and later went to the Lodz Ghetto, hoping to find his family. John found his sister, but they were sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He was liberated from Buchenwald by the Americans in 1945, aged 15, and was part of a group known as the Buchenwald Boys. Two of his siblings also survived.
Steve Lieblich then spoke about the alarming resurgence of antisemitism around the world today.
The evening concluded with Freydi Mrocki from Melbourne leading the attendees in a stirring rendition of The Partisans’ Song, followed by Hatikvah.
