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Alexandria marked its 37th annual Days of Remembrance on April 14, honoring the six million Jews and millions of other people murdered during the Holocaust while urging future generations to confront antisemitism, racism and genocide.
Residents, civic leaders and faith communities gathered at noon in the Frank and Betty Wright Reading Gardens at the Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library on Duke Street. Alexandria was the first municipality in the Washington metropolitan region to establish an annual formal Holocaust remembrance.
The ceremony was part of the national Days of Remembrance, a weeklong commemoration led by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum under a congressional mandate.
Featured speaker Elizabeth “Barry” White, Ph.D., stressed the continuing responsibility to preserve an accurate account of the Holocaust and oppose hatred and genocide in every form.
White recently retired as a historian and research director for the museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide. She previously spent decades at the U.S. Department of Justice working on investigations and prosecutions involving Nazi criminals and other human rights violators.
Rabbi Stephen Rein of Agudas Achim Congregation shared the story of his grandfather, who survived the Holocaust, moved to a new country with few possessions and built a family after losing those he loved.
“The story of my grandfather is nothing short of a miracle,” Rein said. “To his dying day my grandfather never forgot what he lost.”
Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley served as emcee and led the ceremonial lighting of a 54-inch solid-brass candelabrum. The late Holocaust survivor Charlene Schiff and her husband, Ed Schiff, donated it to Alexandria in memory of her parents and sister, as well as the millions killed during the Holocaust.
Its candles symbolize remembrance, human dignity and the rejection of antisemitism and racism. The candelabrum is also available to local schools and civic groups studying the Holocaust.
Bagley described the observance as both a memorial and a call to action. With fewer survivors alive to tell their stories, officials emphasized education and public involvement as safeguards against forgetting or distorting the Holocaust.
The city’s Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities organized the ceremony, which included musical interludes performed by Jane Pollner and Sarah Hover. Attendees concluded the gathering with a moment of reflection for Holocaust victims and survivors.
“Please remember the six million Jews, including one and a half million children, murdered at the hands of the Nazis and the collaborators,” Rein said. “We remember but this memory must guide us forward. It must lead us to kindness, compassion, civility and action.”