Community to remember victims of Holocaust

On May 5, 1945, Julie Kohner's mother, Hanna, was liberated from a concentration camp. Exactly 60-years later, on May 5, 2005, Kohner will tell her parent's amazing story in Laconia.

The Kohner's saga, which follows them from the 1930s in Czechoslovakia to post World War II California, was seen by millions on the popular 1950s TV show "This is Your Life", hosted by Ralph Edwards. Julie Kohner is now an educator in California.

Sponsored by the Greater Laconia Ministerial Association and the Laconia Human Relations Committee, and funded by a grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Manchester, Kohner will bring her "Voices of the Generations" program to the United Baptist Church on Park St. in Lakeport on Thursday, May 5 at 7 p.m.

The program will also be presented earlier in the day to Memorial Middle School eighth graders, who have been studying the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was the planned, systematic attempt by the Nazis to annihilate all the Jews of the world. It resulted in the murder of six-million Jews of Europe. Jews were rounded up in almost every country the Nazis occupied and deported to labor and death camps. Jews were killed not because of any political or economic threat, but only because of their heritage.

In addition to the six-million Jews, at least five-million non-Jews were also Nazi victims. These included Poles, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Gypsies, Greeks, Italians, Russians, Spaniards, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and the mentally and physically handicapped.

On Friday evening, May 6, a special Yom Ha Shoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Interfaith Service will be held at Temple B'nai Israel, 210 Court Street, Laconia at 7:30 p.m. The community in invited. The service will be held by Rabbi Josh Burrows, members of the Human Relations Committee and many area clergy.