YOM HASHOAH COMMEMORATION
A POWERFUL EVENING OF REMEMBRANCE, TESTIMONY, AND ENDURING HOPE
- Published
- Community Message, Events
This week, our community marked one of its most solemn days: Yom Hashoah.
This day, our community’s memorial day for the six millions Jews killed during the Holocaust, is particularly poignant for us in Melbourne. Our local Jewish community has been so enriched and enlivened by the Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives here.
More than 1,000 survivors, descendants, Jewish Victorians and non-Jewish allies, gathered at Monash University for the 2025 JCCV Yom Hashoah Commemoration.
This year’s hosts, past JCCV president Nina Bassat AM and Dr Natalie Bassat, her daughter-in-law, led an emotive program that helped us all to understand what was lost, but also what endured.
As well as Nina herself, who was the only surviving member of her father’s family, the audience heard testimony from Peter Gaspar OAM, who fled Bratislava as a boy and survived in horrific conditions including Nazi camps and a hole dug into a frozen field. We were privileged to have six survivors light memorial candles: Wolf Dean, Erica Frydenberg AM, Peter Gaspar OAM, Rachel Kalman OAM, Cera Newhouse and Joe Nowoweiski. They were all accompanied by proud family members.
I would like to thank our Jewish schools and our Jewish youth movements, who all provided exceptional young people to read testimony and reflections on the past and to sing in the choir.
I would also like to thank our musicians: Layla Carmeli-Wolski, Tammy Cohen, Tomi Kalinski, Rachel Moshel, Freydi Mrocki, Gideon Preiss, Yoni Ringelblum and Jonathan Skovron, who volunteered their time to perform moving pieces.
A big thank you also to our volunteer Yom Hashoah committee led by JCCV board member Natalie Gunn together with Nina Bassat AM, Motti Blum, Amanda Castelan-Starr, Sidra Moshinky, Pauline Rockman OAM and Aviva Weinberg. Each committee member put in an enormous amount of thought, time and energy to create a meaningful commemoration.
Finally a big thank you to our event supporters Bendigo Bank Caulfield Branch, Monash University, Sam and Sherene Hambur and to JCCV patrons the Jakob Frenkiel Charitable Trust, Gandel Foundation, Daniel Aghion KC and Jenny Aghion, Grahame Leonard AM and Ruth Leonard, Erdi Foundation, Besen Family Foundation, Victor and Lotti Smorgon Foundation, Spotlight Foundation and the Rosshandler Charitable Fund.
