The first North American mass gathering of Holocaust survivors focusing on the Jewish civil and armed resistance against Nazi Germany will take place in Washington, D.C., from April 11-15, 1983, Benjamin Meed, president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors announced here last night.
Addressing a dinner of the World Gathering leadership attended by more than 150 leaders from throughout the U.S., Meed said that “not only will the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising be commemorated, but tribute will be paid to those who participated throughout Europe in all forms of resistance.”
Meed, who was the vice chairman of the 1981 World Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Israel in June, 1981, predicted that several thousand American and Canadian survivors and their families will come to the special events scheduled to be held at the Kennedy Center, Constitution Hall, Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery.
Meed also announced that Elie Wiesel, the author and chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, is honorary president. The entire program will be conducted under the sponsorship of the Days of Remembrance Committee of the Memorial Council.
According to those planning the event, tribute will be paid to Jews who fought in the ghettoes and those who prayed in defiance of the edicts that group worship was forbidden. In addition, it was announced that tribute will be paid to the teachers who continued to teach secretly although they did so at the risk of their lives.
“We will remember those who printed illegal leaflets of defiance and those who secretly distributed them in face of severe punishment,” Meed said. “And we will remember those who fought with the partisan forces in the forests and the caves and harassed the Nazi oppressors at every opportunity.”
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