Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

On Yom HaShoah, on the first day of May we remember the ones lost in the Holocaust. Trying to comprehend, cope with and overcome our feelings and memories related to the murder of millions of Jews is an utterly solemn occasion. The full official name of the holiday is Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laGvura, translated as “Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and Heroism.” I would like to share some of the resources of the library that go beyond our somber duty of remembering points out the beauty and artistic representations that were borne under and out of such tragic circumstances.

The library has over 200 non-fiction books on the Shoah; 20 books for children and teens, and dozens of novels for adults. Here are a few examples of our rich collection:

• Hilda Schiff’s anthology of Holocaust Poetry answers the philosophical question “Can there be poetry about the Holocaust?” with an affirmative yes. Sixty-two poets from a wide spectrum share their voices through hundreds of poems.
• The Plays of the Holocaust compilation, edited by Elinor Fuchs, contains the scripts of six plays. They are all insightful, stimulating and thought provoking in different ways.
• Shirli Gilbert’s Music in the Holocaust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps is the authoritative volume on the role of music amongst communities imprisoned under Nazism.
• In Memory’s Kitchen is a cookbook assembled by female prisoners at Terezin. They wrote down their recipes from memory for chocolate torte, breast of goose, plum strudel …as a testament to the future, so that their grandchildren might receive a fragment of their inheritance.
• Children Remember the Holocaust is a documentary hosted by Keanu Reeves, who narrates letters, diaries, and published stories of children who have lived through the Holocaust.
• Yaffa Eliach conducted numerous interviews with Hasidim and gathered their oral histories. From his research he published 39 original stories in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust.

The suffering and testimonies, when told by Holocaust survivors, are a song, a hymn, a testimony to the eternity of Jewish people and the greatness of their spirit.
- Yaffa Eliach, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust