Events Planned to Remember Holocaust

A daylong seminar at Valley College and a dialogue with Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone at the Valley Cities Community Center are among a number of events commemorating Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Events at Valley College on Wednesday include talks by Jewish studies professor Zev Garber, City Councilman Mike Feuer, Holocaust survivors Sy Frumpkin and Erika Jacoby; Randy Steinberg, assistant director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Rabbi Manny Goldstein of Verdugo Hills Hebrew Center.

The day will also include a video history of Italian Jews during the Holocaust, poetry readings, a Judaica exhibit and a ceremony remembering the Jews and non-Jews killed in the Holocaust, or Shoah.

The day’s program is an effort to educate Valley College students, said Jeffrey S. Winikoff, a Hillel member and a commissioner of the school’s Associated Student Union.

“Yom Hashoah is a day of remembering . . . the 11 million people--6 million of them Jews--who were killed in the Holocaust,” he said.

At a Hadassah remembrance April 21, Auschwitz survivor Firestone will conduct an open dialogue. She was an early subject of and an interviewer for Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.

Firestone will discuss the importance of Holocaust education and speak about her efforts to inform high school students.

Wednesday’s events at Valley College, which run from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., will take place in Monarch Hall, 5800 Fulton Ave. Call (818) 877-5901 for information and times of specific events.

The Hadassah program, which is free to the public, will begin at 10 a.m. April 21 at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center, 13164 Burbank Blvd. Call (818) 783-3488 for information.