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Video: For Yom Hashoah, watch this inspiring program honoring the Warsaw Ghetto fighters

The event featured a talk by Julia Mintz, whose directing has focused on narratives of resistance against unimaginable odds

Members of the audience lay flowers on the plaque commemorating the ghetto fighters and the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis Photo by the Congress for Jewish Culture

By Forverts Staff May 5, 2024

As people gather on May 5 and 6 to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, those who can’t attend a Yom Hashoah event in person can now view a moving program that took place two weeks ago, April 19, in New York City.

At this year’s event, the guest speaker was film writer, producer and director Julia Mintz, whose work focuses on narratives of bravery and resistance against unimaginable odds.

The program, organized and performed by the descendants of Holocaust survivors and sponsored by the Congress for Jewish Culture, was conducted in Riverside Park on the site of a plaque called Der Shteyn (The Stone), placed there by the New York City government as part of a plan to build a future memorial there for the Jews who fought the Nazis during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943.

Although the monument project was never carried through, Holocaust survivors, their families and other Jews have been gathering there every year to share memoirs of the uprising, read poetry and sing moving songs written both during and after the Holocaust. At the end the entire audience rises for the singing of the Partisan Hymn, which was written by Hirsh Glik, a 19-year-old in Vilna, under the inspiration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Rukhl Schaechter and Zach Golden are the staff of the Forverts, the Yiddish Forward.

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