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MANSFIELD — Tuesday, April 25th, Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed during a community gathering at Sar Shalom Messianic Congregation on 1650 South Main Street.
The Holocaust was a genocide in which some six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and World War II collaborators. The victims included 1.5 million children, and represented about two-thirds of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe.
(Photo courtesy of Frontlines Ohio)
Rabbi William Halbrook spoke about “Where was GOD when the Holocaust took place?” Halbrook explained that the GOD of Jacob, was in the midst of His people and that He turned the tragedy of the Holocaust into a triumph with the reestablishment of the State of Israel shortly thereafter.
Amie Mutti spoke about a recent local anti-Semitic encounter she had less than twenty-four hours after she and her family attended a Holocaust Survivor presentation at the Richland County Public Library.
“Holocaust Remembrance Day is not about Jewish people forgetting the Holocaust, it’s about non-Jews remembering the Holocaust and agreeing to take a stand that it (Holocaust) will never happen again.”
Amie Mutti
Following Mutti’s testimony, Mansfield City Councilman Cliff Mears shared about his humbling experience visiting Dachau concentration camp in Germany. Mears also gave a proclamation on behalf of the City of Mansfield honoring the occasion. The proclamation made special note of the strong ties the State of Ohio and more specifically, Richland County has with Israel.
The proclamation pointed out that last December Ohio became the fourteenth state to pass legislation, which prohibits the state from contracting with companies that engage in boycotts of Israel, including firms located outside the state.
This past January 2017, over one hundred leading clergymen from north central Ohio sent a letter of apology to the Prime Minister of Israel for the role the U.S. federal government took in allowing the passage of United Nations Resolution 2334 which opposes Israel’s right to its own sovereign territory.
Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is observed as Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel, it is a national memorial day. The first official commemorations took place in 1951.
The Bottom Line:
The Bible says in Isaiah Forty-four, “I formed you, you are My servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by Me.
