For the 37^th year, ADL’s Mountain States Region will host its Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program, one of the largest such events in the United States. The program allows Coloradans of all faiths to come together to honor Holocaust survivors, remember those who perished, educate the community about this horrible crime against humanity and translate those lessons into contemporary action. The event will take place at Temple Emanuel in Denver from 6-7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 24, 2018.

Free tickets are available by visiting https://2018ghrp.eventbrite.com or by calling 303-830-2425. 

This year’s program features a conversation with Sidney Zoltak, a Canadian Holocaust Survivor. An only child born in Poland in July, 1931, Sidney’s idyllic childhood ended when the Nazis entered his town of Siemiatycze in 1939. Following the German occupation of eastern Poland, a ghetto was established in the city and his family was forced to give up their home and relocate to the ghetto. Three months later, on November 2, 1942, when the Nazis began the liquidation of the ghetto, Sidney and his parents, along with several members of his extended family, managed to escape and began hiding in the forest and in various farmers’ shelters. While hiding in the forest in May 1943, out of options and with the situation becoming ever more dangerous, the family met a 15-year-old shepherd boy whose sister recognized Sidney’s mother because she had generously sold the girl a winter coat for only partial payment. That family, the Krynskis, sheltered the Zoltaks for a total of fourteen months until the Soviet liberation in the summer of 1944.    After enduring the last year of the war in hiding, Sidney spent 2.5 years in an Italian DP camp before immigrating to Montreal, Canada with his mother in the spring of 1948, his father having died in the DP camp in 1945. Today, Sidney is the co-president of the Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants and is a board member of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, working to provide financial assistance and to achieve reparations for Holocaust Survivors in Canada and throughout the world. Sidney also guides teens to Poland and Israel on the March of the Living. He is the author of My Silent Pledge: A Journey of Struggle, Survival and Remembrance (MiroLand Publishers, 2013).

The program includes a memorial ceremony and has traditionally featured a special Message to Colorado from Governor John Hickenlooper. Winners of ADL’s “A Tribute to Moral Courage” student essay contest will also be recognized.

ADL is grateful to Mountain States Regional Board Members Adam Berger, Justin Borus and Linda Schatz for chairing the program.

ADL thanks the following event sponsors (as of 3/8/18):

• The Consulate General of Canada
• The Curtiss-Lusher Family
• The Feiner Family Foundation
• Michael and Debbie Feiner
• The M. B. Glassman Foundation
• JEWISHcolorado
• The MDC/Richmond American Foundation