Holocaust Remembrance Week at The FHM
In observance of Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah, we are hosting a number of programs to commemorate the lives of Jews persecuted and murdered during the Holocaust.
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE WEEK PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Screening of An Unknown Country
Monday, May 2, 2016
Incident at Vichy Film Screening & Celebrity Panel Discussion
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Give Day Tampa Bay
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Yom HaShoah Commemorative Ceremony
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE WEEK PROGRAM DETAILS
Screening of An Unknown Country at Sunscreen Film Festival
Sunday, May 1, 2016 @ 4:00 p.m.
at American Stage Theatre
The screening of An Unknown Country at The Sunscreen Film Festival is co-sponsored by The Florida Holocaust Museum. The Museum’s Executive Director, Elizabeth Gelman, will welcome viewers to the film and introduce the film’s Director, Eva Zelig.
The documentary, An Unknown Country, tells the story of European Jews who escaped Nazi persecution to find refuge in an unlikely destination: Ecuador, a South American country barely known at the time. The film follows the exiles’ perilous escape and difficult adjustment as they remake their lives in an exotic, unfamiliar land.
Tickets are $8.00 and can be purchased through TicketLeap HERE.
The film will be screened at American Stage Theater, 163 3rd St N, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.
For additional information, please visit: An Unknown Country
Voices of Survivors
Monday, May 2, 2016 @ 2:00 p.m.
at The Florida Holocaust Museum
The Florida Holocaust Museum, in conjunction with Sumter County, invite the public to hear the story of a local Holocaust Survivor. This free program is open to the public and will take place on Monday, May 2nd at 2:00 p.m. at The Villages Public Library at Pinellas Plaza.
This program includes a live Skype presentation lead by The Florida Holocaust Museum’s Senior Educator, Sandy Mermelstein and features the personal testimony of local Holocaust Survivor, Mary Wygodski.
Mary Wygodski was born in Vilna, Poland and raised in a traditional middle class Jewish family. She was just 15 years old in 1941 when the Germans arrived and her family was sent to the Vilna Ghetto. She was separated from her mother and two sisters at a boxcar in 1943 and never saw them again. She endured forced labor and many other atrocities as she passed through a series of concentration camps to include: Riga (Latvia), Shtutthof (East Prussia) and Magdeburg (Germany). By the end of the war, she was her family’s sole survivor.
This program will conclude with a remote Q & A session between Holocaust Survivor Mary Wygodski and the live audience in Sumter County.
For additional information, please visit: Voices of Survivors
Incident at Vichy Film Screening and Celebrity Panel Discussion
Monday, May 2, 2016 @ 7:30 p.m.
at The Tampa Theatre
The Florida Holocaust Museum is thrilled to present the nation’s first public screening and celebrity panel discussion of the 2015 Signature Theatre Off-Broadway revival production Incident at Vichy – an original Arthur Miller play; directed by acclaimed Broadway Director Michael Wilson and starring Emmy Award-winning actor Richard Thomas.
Director Michael Wilson and Vichy Scholar Brian Phillips will lead a post-film panel discussion for this special one-night-only showing of the BroadwayHD filmed play. Emmy Award-winning actor Richard Thomas will participate remotely.
Film Synopsis: In Vichy, France at the height of World War II, nine men and a boy are rounded up under suspicious circumstances. As ominous reports of far-off camps and cattle cars packed with prisoners begin to circulate, the men battle over politics, philosophy and how to escape.
The New York Times has written three glowing reviews for three different installments of the play. The original staged production in 1964 was acclaimed as “a moving play, a searching play, one of the most important plays of our time,” by Howard Taubman.
The film screening of the 2015 Signature Theatre Off-Broadway performance will take place on Monday, May 2nd at The Tampa Theatre and is FREE and open to the public, with donations gratefully accepted. Sponsorship opportunities are available, please call (727) 820-0100 x274.
For additional information, please visit: Incident at Vichy
Give Day Tampa Bay
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Online at GiveDayTampaBay.org
The goal of Give Day Tampa Bay is to inspire Tampa Bay residents to come together on this one special day and show their pride in their community by contributing to one of the hundreds of different nonprofit organizations participating. Donations will be accepted in a 24-hour period through Give Day Tampa Bay’s secure website.
The Community Foundation of Tampa Bay, which has been growing philanthropy in the Tampa Bay area since 1990, pledged to host a region-wide day of giving in celebration of the 100th anniversary of community foundations nationwide. That was in 2014, and that event raised $1.1 million for Tampa Bay area nonprofits. Last year’s event raised $1.75 million. This year, the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay hopes to raise even more during Give Day Tampa Bay.
For additional information, please visit: Give Day Tampa Bay
Voices of Survivors
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 @ 2:00 p.m.
at The Florida Holocaust Museum
The Florida Holocaust Museum, in conjunction with Escambia County, invite the public to hear the story of a local Holocaust Survivor. This free program is open to the public and will take place on Wednesday, May 4th at 2:00 p.m at the Voices of Pensacola Multicultural Center.
This program includes a live Skype presentation lead by The Florida Holocaust Museum’s Senior Educator, Sandy Mermelstein and features the personal testimony of local Holocaust Survivor, Mary Wygodski.
Mary Wygodski was born in Vilna, Poland and raised in a traditional middle class Jewish family. She was just 15 years old in 1941 when the Germans arrived and her family was sent to the Vilna Ghetto. She was separated from her mother and two sisters at a boxcar in 1943 and never saw them again. She endured forced labor and many other atrocities as she passed through a series of concentration camps to include: Riga (Latvia), Shtutthof (East Prussia) and Magdeburg (Germany). By the end of the war, she was her family’s sole survivor.
This program will conclude with a remote Q & A session between Holocaust Survivor Mary Wygodski and the live audience in Escambia County.
For additional information, please visit: Voices of Survivors
Yom HaShoah Commemorative Ceremony and Talk with Acclaimed Author Martin Goldsmith
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 @ 6:30 p.m.
at The Florida Holocaust Museum
In observance of Yom HaShoah, The Florida Holocaust Museum, in partnership with the Pinellas County Board of Rabbis and the Tampa Rabbinical Association, will host a commemorative ceremony and candle lighting by Holocaust Survivors on Wednesday, May 4th at 6:30 p.m., followed by a talk from Martin Goldsmith, author of Alex’s Wake: A Voyage of Betrayal and a Journey of Remembrance. This program is free and open to the public.
Known more commonly outside of Israel as Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah honors the memory of the more than six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust. The full name of the day is Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah or “Day of the Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Heroism” as it also marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
In his latest memoir, Goldsmith traces the experience of his grandfather and uncle aboard the St. Louis. Filled with refugees, the ship crossed the Atlantic in attempts to flee Nazi Germany, but was turned back at every port and sent back to Nazi-occupied Europe. His relatives spent three years in a number of different settlements before ultimately being sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. Seventy years later, Goldsmith followed in their footsteps to bear witness and reconcile his own relationship with the past.
“Martin’s journey and book offer a new perspective on the Holocaust; one that is typically missing from most books and films about the Shoah. . . . Alex’s Wake is a powerful and evocative memoir.”
–New York Journal of Books
Author Q&A and book signing to conclude this program at The Florida Holocaust Museum.
Please RSVP to (727) 820-0100 x271.
For additional information, please visit: Yom HaShoah