Yom Hashoah Candles, Yom Hashoah, April 7 & 8, 2013

 “Light A Candle, Preserve A Memory”

2013 Yellow Candle Program How to Guide_5773

Web site:  http://www.yellowcandles.org.

As Jews, it is our tradition to honor the memory of deceased family members by lighting a candle on the annual (Yahrzeit) date of their passing.

From 1938 to 1945, six million Jews – men, women and children – were systematically rounded up, transported to concentration camps, beaten, tortured, starved, medically experimented upon, worked to death and ultimately disposed in crematoria. For these people, there is nobody left to honor their memory by lighting a Yahrzeit candle.

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
— Historian Stephen Ambrose
I made the visit [to Buchenwald, April 12, 1945] deliberately, in order to be in aposition to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’
— General Dwight D. Eisenhower
To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened — a denial of fact that is baseless and ignorant and hateful.
— President Barack Obama
To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time…Not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories. For the dead and the living we must bear witness.
— Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel

The world must never forget the Shoah, truly the darkest period in the history of the Jewish People. It is for that reason I urge you to purchase (obtain) and distribute Yellow Candles. These Yahrzeit candles should go to all members of your congregation. In addition, the candles can be sold to other members of your community including local churches and schools as an educational vehicle, and a way of perpetuating that collective memory.

As the Yellow Candle program theme says, “Light a Candle, Preserve a Memory.”

Perform this important mitzvah on Yom Hashoah, April 7, 2013.

Let us never forget. Zachor!