All over the world mourning events were organized in memory of victims and heroes of the Catastrophe. On April 11 President of Mitsva Association opened a mourning meeting, "We have no right to forget what had happened. Each of us remembers names of our relatives and friends who had gone through the Catastrophe."

We are very pleased that our young people took the initiative to organize and conduct the meeting. They said that it would help them feel to be an integral part of world Jewry. They started preparations for the meeting one week in advance. Natalya Rynkovskaya, Tradition Teacher, showed the young guys the materials she had collected for Shoa Fund - Steven Spielberg movies, which he had ordered from film directors of different countries to disseminate authentic information about Holocaust all over the world.

The girls Nastya Ezhova, Nastya Ursolova, Zhenya Chugainova, Natasha Tresvyatskaya, and Masha Arepyeva sang a cappella a few songs in Hebrew about Holocaust. The beautiful music made a sad and sacred atmosphere.

Nastya Borovikova, youth leader, told about Holocaust. She underlined that most important today is to keep the memory of these events. Young people should know their history to prevent such events from happening again. Kolya Levyakov read out the sad statistics and added, "The exact number of victims is unknown due to the lack of authentic information about the genocide. People were killed in large numbers; whole villages were annihilated including all old people and infants."

Anatoliy Komarinskiy read the commemoration prayer "Iskor". After the prayer, everybody including adults and children lit candles in memory of the six million Jews killed at Holocaust.

Certainly, our young organizers invited those who personally went through the Catastrophe and survived despite of everything. Lyubov Koretskaya shared her memories. In winter of 1942, Lyuba, among other teenagers, was moved to the forest to live in non-heated dug-outs. Every morning, dead bodies of frozen to death teenagers were taken outside to form fences. Lyuba with another girl were lucky to run away to a nearby village. Some people gave them shelter. There was no food. The girls begged for food in the streets. The following year, Lyuba and Tasya were moved to Germany to work as slaves. It was an extremely cold winter of 1943. The girls were going in a non-heated freight train carriage. Lyubov Koretskaya said that she still had nightmares with scenes from that time. The guest of our Jewish community Boris Boguslavskiy, natsig from Israel, was very much moved by Lyubov Yakovlevna’s story. He also spoke about the Catastrophe. The world again is facing a threat and we should be together to overcome the dark destroying forces.

Family club leader Sara Dotsenko shared her memories of the Babiy Yar memorial in Kiev. Her story made a big impression on the youth.

Then we kept sorrowful silence for two minutes and finished the mourning meeting with Atikva anthem, the symbol of hope.

Lyudmila Starodubova