Boston's Holocaust Memorial 2005
Along with survivors and children of survivor’s, the Mandel Center’s Susan Kardos spoke to the crowd of 900 in Fanueil Hall at Boston’s Yom Hashoah Ceremony on Sunday, May 8, 2005. The program, entitled "L'Dor VaDor…From Generation to Generation,” was organized around a cantata of 6 themes: Liberation, Courage, Mothers, Community, Faith, and Memory and the lighting of six memorial candles—each representing one million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
In addition to the packed, historic Hall, Governor Mitt Romney, Mayor Thomas Menino, Attorney General Tom Reilly, the Consul General of Israel, the Consul General of Germany, the President of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the President of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the President of the New England Holocaust Memorial and a delegation of leaders from Boston’s sister city, Haifa, were also in attendance.
Susan was selected to speak last, after Rick Mann, President of Friends of the New England Holocaust Memorial, spoke about memory. Mann raised the question: Who will remember? Who will give testimony? Kardos, an active community volunteer, the chair-elect of the Combined Jewish Philanthropy’s Young Leadership Division and an education researcher who has published work on the underground schools in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust was asked to represent the next generation of Jewish leadership in accepting the responsibility of remembering. The program ended outside, at the New England Holocaust Memorial, where Rabbi Moshe Waldoks led the crowd in the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer.