OCPL to hold Days of Remembrance Program to honor Holocaust Victims

On April 13, 2015, the Oconee County Public Library will take part in the nationwide effort to honor the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution by holding a Days of Remembrance program at the Westminster Library at 6pm. The event coincides with the nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust established by Congress and led by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The program, which is open to all ages, will feature Trude Heller, widow to former Greenville mayor Max Heller. She will share her story of surviving the Holocaust by escaping from Austria in 1938 when she was 15 years old, as well as her husband’s story and other events of the time. “The further we get from the events of the Holocaust, the more important it is for us to remember,” says program coordinator and Westminster Branch Manager Leah Price. “To be able to hear a survivor tell their story in person will give us that personal connection so we won’t forget.” The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims, six million were murdered; Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany. Through our Days of Remembrance event, the Oconee County Public Library seeks both to commemorate this tragic history and to reflect on the lessons it holds for our lives today. We also pay tribute to the rescuers who risked their lives to save others during the Holocaust and to the American soldiers who liberated the concentration camps and invite them to attend. “It’s not enough to curse the darkness of the past. We have to illuminate the future,” explains Holocaust survivor Estelle Laughlin. “On Days of Remembrance the most important thing to remember is the humanity that is in all of us to leave the world better for our children and for posterity.” To learn more, visit www.oconeelibrary.com.