David joined other elected officials, citizens, and members and leaders of Alexandria’s Jewish community in Market Square today for the city’s annual ceremony to observe the Days of Remembrance, or Yom HaShoah, for the victims of the Holocaust. During the ceremony, Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille and other City Council members lit the menorah — or six-branched candelabrum — that Holocaust survivor Charlene Schiff and her husband, Ed, donated to the city in memory of Charlene Schiff’s parents, sister, and six million Jews and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust.
The guest speaker, Ruth W. Messinger, president and executive director of the American Jewish World Service, implored the audience to remember the lessons of the Holocaust and to speak out and act against evil in our own time. Messinger has been leading the effort to stop the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, which is now in its 38th month, and she urged people to join this weekend’s Rally to Save Darfur in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall.
“There are few more moving ceremonies in Alexandria than our annual Yom HaShoah observance,” said David, who in 2004 founded an online effort to lobby Congress on the Darfur genocide. “As a Jew and as an Alexandrian, it means a lot to me that our community comes together each year to reflect on this horror and to use it as a reminder of our obligations to our fellow human beings.”
This is the 19th consecutive year that the City of Alexandria has publicly observed Yom HaShoah, making it the oldest continuous remembrance of the Holocaust in Virginia.
