Emek Sholom is hosting our annual Kristallnacht Commemoration on Sunday, November 8, at 2 p.m. at North America’s oldest Holocaust memorial site, located right here in Richmond. 

This year's theme, “Memory and Moral Courage: Standing Together Against Hate,” focuses on the essential call to remember and the responsibility that comes with memory. 

Our keynote speaker, Holocaust Survivor Joel Fabian, brings an extraordinary personal connection to this history. Mr. Fabian was only four years old when he and his family were forced from their Berlin home to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. 

When the family was placed on a transport list for Auschwitz, circumstances, including the intervention of a German Rabbi and the hiding of the children in laundry baskets, ultimately helped save their lives. 

After being liberated as a seven-year-old child, Mr. Fabian and his family ultimately immigrated to the United States, where he went on to serve in the military, work with historians to uncover his family history, educate students and communities, and become the National Holocaust Committee chairman of the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A.

The precious and increasingly rare opportunity to hear and learn directly from a Holocaust survivor comes at a moment of surging bigotry and hatred aimed at the Jewish people.

Nearly 88 years after Kristallnacht, the calls to remember and to moral courage are crucial. Memory cannot be taken for granted. It is not passive. And memory asks something of us. 

To honor this mission, Emek Sholom warmly invites everyone from the Jewish and wider Richmond community to join this special commemoration. Come hear Mr. Fabian’s testimony, honor those whose lives were shattered by the Shoah, and reaffirm together that a tide of hatred must never be met with callousness or silence.

Thank you to the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond for their special support,

Sunday, November 8, | 2 p.m.
Emek Sholom Holocaust Memorial Cemetery, (inside Forest Lawn Cemetery) off Laburnum Ave., near the Richmond Raceway complex.
Please join us, and bring a friend.