By Samuel Asher

September is a busy month at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, and for many of you, it is a meaningful one, too.

Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on September 11, and it opens the Jewish New Year. Ten days later, on September 20 and 21, that period closes with Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah looks ahead. Yom Kippur asks you to look back, honestly, and account for the year you just had. It is not lost on me that this is close to the work we do here every day.

I also want to point you toward a wonderful book in our Museum Book Store this month, Honey Cake & Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors. It is a cookbook, but really it is a collection of memories, recipes that survivors carried with them and passed down, each one tied to a person or a place they lost. Proceeds go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation's Auschwitz Legacy Fellowship, the same fellowship that sent two of our own staff, Megan Ferenczy and Matt Sampson, to Poland this year.

Dimensions in Testimony

Last thing: our Dimensions in Testimony theater has a new witness this September, Alan Moskin. Alan was 18 years old and a U.S. Army staff sergeant when he helped liberate Gunskirchen, a subcamp of Mauthausen, in the final days of the war. He spent much of the rest of his life talking about it, to students, to veterans' groups, to anyone who would listen, right up until he passed away in 2023. Now, through the same technology behind our survivor testimonies, you can sit down in front of him, ask a question, and hear him answer. 

We hope to see you here this September.