Holocaust Remembrance Day Program on April 21

Hartford Hillel and the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies will host a Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) program on Tuesday, April 21, at the Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization, located in Mortensen Library.

The event will begin at 7 p.m. with the opening of a new exhibition titled “The Secret Flame of Hope,” featuring the art of Israeli artist and Holocaust survivor Motke Blum.

Following the exhibit opening, at 7:30 p.m., there will be a Yom HaShoah ceremony and vigil performed by students and community members.

The ceremony will be followed by a talk by Rabbi Philip Lazowski, rabbi emeritus at Beth Hillel Synagogue in Bloomfield and visiting rabbi at The Emmanuel Synagogue in West Hartford. Rabbi Lazowski was born in 1930 in Bielice, Poland (now Belarus). He arrived in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1947 after surviving the Holocaust by hiding for almost three years in the White Russian woods. Rabbi Lazowski has authored and published six books, including Faith and Destiny and Understanding Your Neighbor’s Faith.

The exhibit, “The Secret Flame of Hope,” is a singular and innovative project, attempting to offer a unique approach to Holocaust Remembrance Day. The exhibit will be shown simultaneously by communities around the world on Yom HaShoah; the Sherman Museum is one of 200 locations worldwide chosen to host the exhibition. The attempt to bring so many institutions together in a single, collective, worldwide effort was the brainchild of Blum’s daughter, Anat Galili.

The exhibit at the Sherman Museum is sponsored by the Matthew and Hadass Rubin Fund at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies.

Artist Motke Blum was born in Romania in 1925 and immigrated to Israel in 1944 following years of persecution. A graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts, his paintings of Jerusalem have been shown around the world and are held in numerous private collections. Only in recent years has he returned to the subject of the Holocaust in his art. In his words: “When they put us against the wall, for hours with no food and no water and beat us up, I felt I was going to die. I said 'Shema Israel' and prayed for an angel or a white dove. The angel still visits me in my paintings or sends the dove.” The dove, which symbolizes freedom from the concentration camps, is also a symbol of Blum's connection with Israel as a vehicle of Jewish redemption.

For more information, please visit the Greenberg Center website or contact the Greenberg Center at 860.768.4964.