Survivors, families remember the Shoah

RIGHTEOUS Among the Nations were remembered and survivors honoured at the Jewish Community Council of Victoria’s (JCCV) annual Yom Hashoah commemoration on Sunday night.

The sombre ceremony at Monash University’s Clayton campus comprised survivor testimonies, short films and youth choirs, as well as the presentation of a Righteous Among the Nations medal on behalf of Yad Vashem.

Israeli embassy spokesperson Dor Shapira and JCCV president John Searle presented the award to George Paszkudzki and Leonarda Paszkudzki-Baizert, whose father August Paszkudzki and grandmother Leonarda Paszkudzki hid their mother, a Polish Jew, during the Holocaust.

The ceremony began with part one of a three-part video presentation, which focused on Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust. The¬† second part depicted the horrors of Nazi occupation, and finally, the renewal of Jewish life around the world was celebrated in the third.

The video included interviews with six survivors, who were among 900 young men liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp
in 1945.

The men spoke about growing up in Kalisz, central Poland, and the wanton decimation of Jewish life there during Nazi occupation.

The interviewees, who were present at the ceremony, then lit six memorial candles to commemorate the six million Jewish victims of he Holocaust.

Survivor Jack Unikowski delivered an impassioned testimony about his experiences as an orphan in the Lodz Ghetto and in Auschwitz.

Part three of the video presentation also included a message from Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich, who spoke about rebuilding the once-thriving Jewish community in the country.

Proceedings were brought to a close with rousing renditions of The Partisan Song, Advance Australia Fair and Hatikvah, sung by the Jewish Youth Choir.

RIGHTEOUS Among the Nations were remembered and survivors honoured at the Jewish Community Council of Victoria’s (JCCV) annual Yom Hashoah commemoration on Sunday night.

PHOTO: Buchenwald survivor Jack Unikowski gives his personal testimony at the Yom Hashoa Commoration in Melbourne. Photo: Peter Haskin

ADAM KAMIEN

Survivors, families remember the Shoah

RIGHTEOUS Among the Nations were remembered and survivors honoured at the Jewish Community Council of Victoria's (JCCV) annual Yom Hashoah commemoration on Sunday night.

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