WATCH: Astronaut Records Holocaust Remembrance Message In Outer Space

By Josefin Dolsten April 12, 2018

(JTA) — American astronaut Andrew “Drew” Feustel didn’t let being in outer space stop him from commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Instead, Feustel recorded a video message aboard the International Space Station to honor the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.

In the video released on Thursday, the NASA astronaut displayed a replica of a drawing titled “Moon Landscape” by Petr Ginz, a Czech teen with Jewish roots who was killed at Auschwitz. Feustel, who received the drawing from the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, noted that late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon had brought a replica of the very same drawing with him on board the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003.

Ramon and the rest of that crew were killed when the shuttle broke apart shortly after takeoff.

“May the memories of Petr Ginz, astronaut Ilan Ramon and the six million victims of the Holocaust always remain in our thoughts,” Feustel says in the message, before floating away inside the space station.

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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