Along with holidays, there are remembrance days which we observe with great responsibility. One of such sad remembrance dates is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We devoted our meeting in our literary saloon to this date on January 27. In Taraz Hesed we lit candles to commemorate victims of Holocaust and observed a minute of silence for those who was killed.

During the World War II, Nazis killed six million Jews in Germany and in the occupied European countries. They liquidated thousands of Jewish communities. This was the most tragic period for the whole history of Jewish people. Hitler’s actions to annihilate our people have no precedent in history.

Everybody who came to our literary saloon were deeply moved by made in our Hesed posters "Catastrophe" and "Holocaust" illustrated with pictures from magazines showing scenes of mass annihilation of Jews. People listened with tears in their eyes to the excerpts from articles from "Lehaim" magazines. Authors of these articles were personally involved in those tragic events and had a narrow escape from the hell - "Babi Yar is the eternal echo of Holocaust" by D. Levina. We listened to Evgeniy Evtushenko’s poem "Babi Yar", Pavel Antokolskiy’s "Annihilation Camp", Margarita Aliger’s excerpts from the epic "Your Victory". Could these poems leave anybody indifferent?! Those people who were personally involved in those tragic events recollected their lives in those dreadful years. This meeting in the literary saloon turned out very touching and moving.

This year on May 9th, we will celebrate the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. The war brought a lot of grief to peoples. Its echo still torments our souls. We will always remember the six million victims of the Jewish people genocide. Every year we observe Shoa, translated directly from Hebrew it means "disaster, devastation".

We respectfully bow down our heads before those who could survive despite of everything.

Ida Bukina