Memorial services marking the 41st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising will be held all over the United States this weekend, honoring the memory of six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
In New York, the services will be held Sunday, April 29, at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan where the principal speakers will be Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R. NY), Mayor Edward Koch, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and Meir Rosenne, the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.
Benjamin Meed, president of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization and chairman of the United Commemoration Committee which is sponsoring the event, said “We must protect the Holocaust from trivialization and commercialization.”
Meed, who will chair the memorial service, added: “Although we are still asking the question — How did it happen? Who failed? Where were the Jewish leaders? — these questions should not distract our attention from the real murderers — the Germans and their collaborators — or from the profound failure of world leaders and church leaders. Their silence has yet to be judged by history.”
Meed recalled, “The Warsaw ghetto fighters who died in the struggle for their own lives and for the dignity of the Jewish people.” He noted that they “have become a symbol for the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. So that there shall never again be genocide, the world must not forget the heinous crimes committed against the Jewish people. That is why we meet each year. We, the survivors, remember. The world must not be permitted to forget.”
Meed released the text of New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s proclamation designating April 29 as “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Day” in New York State. The Governor declared, in part: “We honor the memories of the resisters as humankind’s heroes, and by the light of their sacrifice and martyrdom, we see more clearly the need for continued vigilance and struggle against all oppression and the stifling of human freedom and dignity… They shall live forever as a blessing in the hearts of a grateful humanity.”
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