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NEWS | April 11, 2018

JB Charleston to live stream Holocaust Remembrance Program

By U.S. Air Force SSgt. Leesel Lewis Holocaust Remembrance Committee

The Joint Base Charleston Holocaust Remembrance Committee has arranged to live stream the 25th Annual Federal Inter-Agency Holocaust Remembrance Program, "Bearing Witness," which will be held, tomorrow, Thursday, April 12, 2018 at the Lincoln Theatre, in Washington, D.C. from 11:00 am - 12:30 pm.

JB Charleston teammates can view the program via live stream in the LRS auditorium in Bldg. 610 on the Air Force Base.

Audience members will have the privilege of hearing from Holocaust survivor Halina Silber, who was born in Poland and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp. As a teenager, Ms. Silber went to work for Oskar Schindler, a businessman who was a member of the Nazi Party and who, seeing the horrors the Nazis were perpetrating against the Jews of Europe, employed and saved the lives of over 1,000 Jews, including Ms. Silber. Steven Spielberg based his 1993 movie, Schindler's List (Best Picture winner), on the Schindler story. Ms. Silber, who lives in Maryland, bears witness to the Holocaust and to Oskar Schindler's courage in opposing tyranny and evil. Another local Holocaust survivor, Jacqueline Mendels Birn, who grew up in France, will play cello during the program with her string quartet.

The Holocaust (also called the Shoah) was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. It was part of the "Final Solution" - the Nazi plan to annihilate more than nine million Jews in Europe. The Nazis murdered millions of others as well, including Roma, Communists, homosexuals and people with disabilities. In 1980, Congress expressed its intent that the Holocaust should be observed "throughout the United States" each year. Since 1994, thousands of federal employees have attended the inter-agency Holocaust remembrance.