April 27 / 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Yom HaShoah: Community Holocaust Commemoration
Eighty Years Later: Bearing Witness, Building Legacy
Sunday, April 27, 2025, 1PM | Doors open at 12:30PM
Garfield Theatre at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center | JACOBS FAMILY CAMPUS
Free event, pre-registration required.
It has been 80 years since the liberation of the concentration camps, a moment that signified both the end of unimaginable horror and the beginning of a new responsibility – to bear witness, to tell the truth, and to ensure the lessons of the Holocaust shape the future. As we approach a time when there will no longer be Survivors to share their firsthand accounts, the responsibility to carry forward their stories and uphold the promise of Never Again falls to all of us.
At this year’s Yom HaShoah commemoration, hosted in partnership by Jewish Federation of San Diego and the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, the San Diego Jewish community will come together to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and honor those who survived through a moving candle-lighting ceremony, prayers, songs, and reflections from local Survivors and their descendants.
Our keynote speaker, Melissa Mott, Executive Vice President of Education Strategy & Programs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has spent over a decade working at the intersection of Holocaust history, collective memory, and antisemitism education.
Melissa will discuss the urgent need to preserve Holocaust memory in an era of rising antisemitism and historical distortion. She will highlight evolving approaches to Holocaust education, the role of storytelling in sustaining memory, and how communities can ensure future generations remain connected to this history.
Attendees will also learn about the growing efforts across San Diego County to modernize and expand Holocaust education and hear from the children of Survivors as they share their family’s stories. As we mark Eighty Years Later: Bearing Witness, Building Legacy, we reaffirm our shared commitment: to remember, to educate, and to ensure that the truth endures.
Join us for this powerful afternoon of remembrance, reflection, and action – because the responsibility to bear witness is now ours.
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Yom HaShoah
Jewish Federation of San Diego
April 27 /
1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
