The Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center and Westchester Jewish Council Annual Countywide Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemoration was held April 14 at the Garden of Remembrance in White Plains.
An estimated 400 people including over 40 Westchester County elected officials turned out to hear a keynote speech by Holocaust survivor Joseph Gosler.
The event began with the Opening of the Gates by Hillels of Westchester and the Sounding of the Shofar by HHREC and WJC Board Member Mitchell Ostrove and was followed by the Procession of 34 Rescued Torahs led by Rabbi Leora Frankel, president Westchester Board of Rabbis and babbi, Larchmont Temple.
Welcome remarks were delivered by Daniel Weinreb, chairperson of HHREC, and the invocation was offered by Reverend Dr. Kelly Hough Rogers, Scarsdale Congregational Church UCC. Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins welcomed all attendees, and concluded his remarks with “Never Again, and Not on our Watch.” Jenkins was followed by the keynote speaker.
Gosler told his story of being born in the Netherlands in 1942 and as a seven-month-old child was given to the Dutch resistance to a family who helped raise him as one of their own, while his birth parents were caught by the Nazis and was severely beaten. He then shared that, when World War II ended and he was reunited with his parents, they were total strangers and that later, in 1949, he and his family immigrated to Israel before they arrived in the U.S. in 1953.
Following Gosler, the Holocaust Kaddish was offered by Frankel and Rabbi Adam Baldachin, Shaarei Tikvah, and the music selection was led by Cantor Lauren Phillips Fogelman, Temple Beth Abraham. White Plains Mayor Justin Brasch shared comments about the importance of this annual event, and the program closed with remarks by Michael Mittelman, Westchester Jewish Council Board president.
