Be Local on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps will be commemorated Jan. 27, honoring millions of victims of the Nazis.
“It was a horrible piece of our history,” said Myrna Giannopoulos, last president of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Uniontown. “It should not be shuttered and forgotten.”
Be Local means taking time to remember by visiting area memorials to Holocaust victims.
The property for the closed Uniontown Jewish Community Center houses an outdoor memorial called Gate of Life, an 16-foot-tall, sandstone archway created by the late artist Zeljko Kujundzic when he was a professor at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus. The sculpture, commissioned by B’nai B’rith Fayette Lodge No. 471 in 1982, forms two letters of the Hebrew alphabet spelling “Chi,” or life.
“It’s quiet and off by itself,” said Giannopoulous. “And even though it’s near a busy road, you can find solitude there.”
The Footedale worship site for St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Parish of Western Fayette County includes an outdoor memorial for St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died at Auschwitz after volunteering to take the place of Francis Gajowniczek, one of 10 Polish soldiers singled out to die in reprisal for the escape of a prisoner.
After Kolbe was canonized in 1982, St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church in Footedale, now part of St. Francis Parish, erected a shrine in Kolbe’s honor under the guidance of its pastor, the Rev. Sebastian Pajdik, a survivor of the Nazi occupation of Poland. Gajowniczek , who spent years giving witness to Kolbe, made a pilgrimage to the Footedale shrine in 1984.
Designed by Polish artist Adam Fuks and constructed by parishioners, the shrine is made of stone to look like a concentration camp prison cell with arched posts that hold barbed wire. Two stained-glass windows bear the words “Without sacrifice, there is no love,” one written in English and the other Polish.
“It’s in a beautiful location and very serene,” said Linda Rohol, parish business manager, who noted an outdoor Vigil Mass for the Feast Day of the Assumption is held at the shrine as the vigil takes place Aug. 14 on the the saint’s feast day.
In a time when hate crime often makes the news, learning to recognize and stop prejudice is essential.
Eric Lidji, director of the Rauh Jewish History Program and Archives at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, however, noted, “One of the things I feel strongly about is that it’s important to learn about the atrocities of the past and present but it’s not to let that be all you know about another culture.
“Part of building respect and tolerance is learning about the living culture of another people. We’re giving people an opportunity to learn about Jewish culture in our region,” Lidji said.
The Rauh Jewish History Program & Archives, housed in the Heinz History Center, was founded in 1989 to document the history of Jews and Jewish communities of Western Pennsylvania.
The collection includes correspondence, diaries, memoirs, ledgers, minutes, scrapbooks, ephemera, audio tapes, photographs, and moving images.
Information from the Rauh archives is on the Heinz History Center website. For example, the category “Towns” includes local communities: Bentleyville, Brownsville, California, Charleroi, Connellsville, Donora, Masontown, Monongahela, Mount Pleasant, Scottdale and Uniontown.
The public can also visit the archives 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Admission to the archives is free.
Those interested in joining the Be Local Network can call 724-439-7515 or email swallach@heraldstandard.com. Discount cards are available at the 蘑菇视频, 8 E. Church St., Uniontown, and at the Greene County Messenger, 32 Church St., Waynesburg.