Countywide : Pennies to Represent Victims of Holocaust

This year’s countywide observation of Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance for victims of the Holocaust, will include the collection and display at an Anaheim synagogue of 1.5 million pennies memorializing the 1.5 million children who died in concentration camps. Also planned is an ecumenical service at a Garden Grove Catholic church.

The pennies, now being collected in homes, synagogues and Hebrew schools, will be displayed next Sunday at Temple Beth Emet in Anaheim, according to Cheri Wilner Kessner, co-chair of the observance. The goal of the drive, which is sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Orange County, is to raise $15,000 to endow a Holocaust Memorial Education Fund.

Kessner said that the fund will be used for audiovisual aids, speakers and lesson plans to “educate all the children of our county.”

In addition to the pennies and other exhibits done by children, Kessner said, 500 candles will be lighted at the synagogue to commemorate a group of nearly 1,200 children killed in Poland in the fall of 1943. Each candle will bear the name of a child killed in the massacre, together with birth date and parents’ names. The data comes from Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum and archive in Israel.

Kessner, herself the child of Holocaust survivors, said she developed the idea of using pennies to commemorate tragedy because “I wanted the children of Orange County to learn about it.” A similar observance, sponsored by the Holocaust Survivors Memorial Foundation, took place last year at Lincoln Center in New York City.

On May 6, a countywide ecumenical observation will be held at St. Columban’s Catholic Church in Garden Grove, sponsored by several groups, including the Diocese of Orange, the Orange County Board of Rabbis and B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League.