Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre to hold Holocaust commemoration

The Hewlett-East Rockaway Jewish Centre on 295 Main Street, East Rockaway, will hold its annual Holocaust Commemoration on April 8 at 7:30 p.m.

The keynote speaker for this year's commemoration will be Syd Mandelbaum, a child of Holocaust survivors who is also co-founder of the DNA Shoah Project. In honor of his parents survival against all odds from the horrors of Nazi concentration camps Mandelbaum founded "Rock and Wrap it Up!," a hunger-relief organization and an anti-poverty think-tank that uses greening strategies. Mandelbaum's four grandparents and four uncles were murdered and cremated in Auschwitz.

Mandelbaum, a longtime Cedarhurst resident, co-founded the DNA Shoah Project to help Holocaust families find lost members. Mandelbaum also co-founded the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, served as its first Secretary General, co-founded Second Generation of Long Island, and served on the Committee of Revson Video Archive of Holocaust Testimony, Yale University at Sterling Library. He also served as a consultant to the United States Holocaust Museum Video Archive.

Mandelbaum served for 18 years as Commissioner on the Nassau County Commission on Human Rights. As Founding Chairman of the South Shore Anti-Bias Task Force, he helped start anti-bias task forces in the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway and Lawrence and Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools. He founded and chaired the Nassau County Human Rights Awareness Day, now in its 24th year, which teaches students how to fight anti-Semitism and bias.

For further information on the Holocaust commemoration call (516)791-2090.