Remember, Honor, and Teach: Righteous Among the Nations - Yom Hashoah April 15

On Sunday, April 15, at 1:30 p.m. the San Diego community will present a special Holocaust commemoration (Yom Hashoah) program. The event will be held at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, in the Garfield Theater, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. The theme will be Remember, Honor, and Teach: Righteous Among the Nations.

The Reverend Canon Jack E. Lindquist will speak on ‘Righteous Gentiles’ and Nazi Resisters Among the Christian Clergy: Eight Examples. His talk will be followed by a brief filmed interview of Irene Gut Opdyke, a Polish Christian rescuer who, among other lifesaving actions, hid 12 Jews in the cellar of a German officer’s villa, where she was the housekeeper.

The program will open with a military color guard reminiscent of camp liberation, a musical presentation, and a traditional candle lighting ceremony, with candles lit by Holocaust survivors and their descendants in memory of those who perished. Interspersed throughout the program will be musical selections. The entire event will last approximately 90 minutes.

The Rev. Canon Jack E. Lindquist is a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He serves as a priest and Canon for Biblical Studies at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego. Since 1970 he has taught at the University of San Diego in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Canon Lindquist’s most popular course in the Catholic university is entitled “The Holocaust and the Churches in Nazi Germany.” He teaches about the complicity of the Lutheran and Catholic churches and their leaders in the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust, and also about the courageous few among the Christian clergy who resisted the Nazis.

The Holocaust Commemoration has been held in San Diego for more than three decades and is the largest in the United States. Last year more than 700 people attended.

The event is a collaboration of the San Diego Rabbinical Association, Jewish Community Relations Center of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, the New Life Club, the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center Jacobs Family Campus, the Center for Jewish Culture, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Community Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information about the 2012 Community Holocaust Commemoration contact Linda Feldman, Director, Jewish Community Relations Center, at 858.737.7138.