Accessibility Statement Skip Navigation
  • Why PRWeb
  • How It Works
  • Who Uses It
  • Pricing
  • Login
  • GDPR
  • Create a Free Account
Return to PRWeb homepage
  • News
  • Resources
  • Contact
When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type.

Searching for your content...

No results found. Please change your search terms and try again.
  • News in Focus
      • Browse News Releases

      • All News Releases
      • Multimedia Gallery

      • All Multimedia
      • All Photos
      • All Videos
  • Business & Money
      • Auto & Transportation

      • Aerospace, Defense
      • Air Freight
      • Airlines & Aviation
      • Automotive
      • Maritime & Shipbuilding
      • Railroads and Intermodal Transportation
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Transportation, Trucking & Railroad
      • Travel
      • Trucking and Road Transportation
      • View All Auto & Transportation

      • Business Technology

      • Blockchain
      • Broadcast Tech
      • Computer & Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Components
      • Electronic Design Automation
      • Financial Technology
      • High Tech Security
      • Internet Technology
      • Nanotechnology
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Semiconductors
      • View All Business Technology

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Financial Services & Investing

      • Accounting News & Issues
      • Acquisitions, Mergers and Takeovers
      • Banking & Financial Services
      • Bankruptcy
      • Bond & Stock Ratings
      • Conference Call Announcements
      • Contracts
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Dividends
      • Earnings
      • Earnings Forecasts & Projections
      • Financing Agreements
      • Insurance
      • Investments Opinions
      • Joint Ventures
      • Mutual Funds
      • Private Placement
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring & Recapitalization
      • Sales Reports
      • Shareholder Activism
      • Shareholder Meetings
      • Stock Offering
      • Stock Split
      • Venture Capital
      • View All Financial Services & Investing

      • General Business

      • Awards
      • Commercial Real Estate
      • Corporate Expansion
      • Earnings
      • Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
      • Human Resource & Workforce Management
      • Licensing
      • New Products & Services
      • Obituaries
      • Outsourcing Businesses
      • Overseas Real Estate (non-US)
      • Personnel Announcements
      • Real Estate Transactions
      • Residential Real Estate
      • Small Business Services
      • Socially Responsible Investing
      • Surveys, Polls and Research
      • Trade Show News
      • View All General Business

  • Science & Tech
      • Consumer Technology

      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Blockchain
      • Cloud Computing/Internet of Things
      • Computer Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Consumer Electronics
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Gaming
      • Financial Technology
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Multimedia & Internet
      • Peripherals
      • Social Media
      • STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Consumer Technology

      • Energy & Natural Resources

      • Alternative Energies
      • Chemical
      • Electrical Utilities
      • Gas
      • General Manufacturing
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil & Energy
      • Oil and Gas Discoveries
      • Utilities
      • Water Utilities
      • View All Energy & Natural Resources

      • Environ­ment

      • Conservation & Recycling
      • Environmental Issues
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Products & Services
      • Green Technology
      • Natural Disasters
      • View All Environ­ment

      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Agriculture
      • Chemical
      • Construction & Building
      • General Manufacturing
      • HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning)
      • Machinery
      • Machine Tools, Metalworking and Metallurgy
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Paper, Forest Products & Containers
      • Precious Metals
      • Textiles
      • Tobacco
      • View All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Telecomm­unications

      • Carriers and Services
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Telecommunications Equipment
      • Telecommunications Industry
      • VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
      • Wireless Communications
      • View All Telecomm­unications

  • Lifestyle & Health
      • Consumer Products & Retail

      • Animals & Pets
      • Beers, Wines and Spirits
      • Beverages
      • Bridal Services
      • Cannabis
      • Cosmetics and Personal Care
      • Fashion
      • Food & Beverages
      • Furniture and Furnishings
      • Home Improvement
      • Household, Consumer & Cosmetics
      • Household Products
      • Jewelry
      • Non-Alcoholic Beverages
      • Office Products
      • Organic Food
      • Product Recalls
      • Restaurants
      • Retail
      • Supermarkets
      • Toys
      • View All Consumer Products & Retail

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Health

      • Biometrics
      • Biotechnology
      • Clinical Trials & Medical Discoveries
      • Dentistry
      • FDA Approval
      • Fitness/Wellness
      • Health Care & Hospitals
      • Health Insurance
      • Infection Control
      • International Medical Approval
      • Medical Equipment
      • Medical Pharmaceuticals
      • Mental Health
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Supplementary Medicine
      • View All Health

      • Sports

      • General Sports
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Sporting Events
      • Sports Equipment & Accessories
      • View All Sports

      • Travel

      • Amusement Parks and Tourist Attractions
      • Gambling & Casinos
      • Hotels and Resorts
      • Leisure & Tourism
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Passenger Aviation
      • Travel Industry
      • View All Travel

  • Policy & Public Interest
      • Policy & Public Interest

      • Advocacy Group Opinion
      • Animal Welfare
      • Congressional & Presidential Campaigns
      • Corporate Social Responsibility
      • Domestic Policy
      • Economic News, Trends, Analysis
      • Education
      • Environmental
      • European Government
      • FDA Approval
      • Federal and State Legislation
      • Federal Executive Branch & Agency
      • Foreign Policy & International Affairs
      • Homeland Security
      • Labor & Union
      • Legal Issues
      • Natural Disasters
      • Not For Profit
      • Patent Law
      • Public Safety
      • Trade Policy
      • U.S. State Policy
      • View All Policy & Public Interest

  • People & Culture
      • People & Culture

      • Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American
      • African American
      • Asian American
      • Children
      • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
      • Hispanic
      • Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual
      • Men's Interest
      • People with Disabilities
      • Religion
      • Senior Citizens
      • Veterans
      • Women
      • View All People & Culture

  • Hamburger menu
  • Cision PRWeb provides efficient communication tools to continuously engage with target audiences across multiple online channels
  • Create a Free Account
    • ALL CONTACT INFO
    • Contact Us


      11AM ET Sunday – 8PM ET Friday

  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • News in Focus
    • Browse All News
    • Multimedia Gallery
  • Business & Money
    • Auto & Transportation
    • Business Technology
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Financial Services & Investing
    • General Business
  • Science & Tech
    • Consumer Technology
    • Energy & Natural Resources
    • Environ­ment
    • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
    • Telecomm­unications
  • Lifestyle & Health
    • Consumer Products & Retail
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Health
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Policy & Public Interest
  • People & Culture
    • People & Culture
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Send a Release
  • Sign up
  • Log in
  • Resources
  • RSS
  • GDPR

International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Holocaust Garden of Hope


News provided by

Holocaust Remembrance Association

Feb 03, 2024, 19:10 ET

Share this article

Share toX

Share this article

Share toX


Standing room only gathering at Kings Harbor remembering the Holocaust and celebrating the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Holocaust Garden of Hope

KINGWOOD, Texas, Feb. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- On January 28, 2024, International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Texas Holocaust Remembrance Week was commemorated on Holocaust Remembrance Association's fifth anniversary of its establishment. The Holocaust Garden of Hope, a project of Holocaust Remembrance Association hosted a gathering of over 100 at Kings Harbor Waterfront Village in Kingwood, Texas. Speakers included founders Rozalie and Mitch Jerome, retired Texas A&M Professor David Lawhon and Rice University Professor Moshe Vardi.

Mitch Jerome spoke about the new antisemitism, putting the recent "Black Shabbat (Sabbath)" on October 7 in Israel in perspective. He recapped the recent tragedy with sobering statistics, and then brought the story home, commenting that most of America is covered with some form of hate, antisemitism, terrorism, etc. "It's like a plague over the country." Referring to the Holocaust Garden of Hope, he said, "We are in a spiritual war – good against evil, light against darkness. It's so obvious one more Holocaust Garden here is not going to tilt the scales to a kumbaya world. It's only a change of heart. We call it in Hebrew 'teshuva'. But that doesn't mean we don't keep building museums, coming together like we're doing today, standing for righteousness. Otherwise, our silence or inactivity will be misinterpreted for acquiescence."

"The Holocaust did not start with murder. It started with words. It started with hate." - Professor Moshe Vardi

Post this

Rozalie Jerome held a meaningful candle-lighting ceremony, inviting people from the audience to remember six major concentration camps and six categories of people murdered by the Nazis.

David Lawhon is Professor Emeritus of American history and Holocaust studies for Texas A&M University at Galveston, where he was the university's Honors program director. He related the story of his father, a liberator in World War II with the American 49th Rainbow Division, who liberated two concentration camps. After training, he was assigned to pull bodies out of rail cars. As he sat and wept, "a living skeleton, basically, crawled up to him and kissed him on his feet. In a lot of the Jewish community, I'm known as a son of an angel. I guarantee if you're in a concentration camp and those boys come break into those gates and liberate you, they had wings on their backs." "My father and a lot of other people's fathers risked their lives, to go over and liberate these people. It affected him a lot. Hitler took my father away from me." Lawhon has a long history with the March of Remembrance Texas and is responsible for bringing the marches to Universities. He concluded his remarks with, "Take care of your children. Teach them. It is your responsibility to do that."

Moshe Vardi is a University Professor and George Distinguished-Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, where he recently celebrated his 30th anniversary. He is also a faculty advisor for the Kennedy Institute and holds many honorary doctorates and fellowships. He remarked, "we're here today because it's the 79th anniversary of Liberation of Auschwitz. But it was a long time ago [I am] here today because antisemitism is alive and well. I used to think that it's a niche phenomenon on the extreme left, on the extreme right, I discovered I was wrong" He mentioned his recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle that can be read here. Vardi was born in a small kibbutz in Israel to Hungarian parents who had both survived the Holocaust. So much of his family was lost, "I can legitimately say I grew up in a house with more ghosts than living people." He learned of the Holocaust when his father gave him a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, when he was 10 year's old. "My mother was a natural raconteur. When she retired from her job as a librarian at age 60, she spent the next 20 years talking about the Holocaust. She used to bear witness, now it's my job. Every Holocaust Remembrance Day, I find an audience and I tell the story of how my parents survived the Holocaust. I view it as a duty and a mission."

Professor Vardi told the enrapt audience, "The Holocaust did not start with murder. It started with words. It started with hate. There's one important lesson that people don't talk much about. After the Holocaust the Jewish people decided, 'We are the only ones who can defend ourselves. We cannot count on the world to defend us. We have to defend ourselves.'" He ended with a poem by Hannah Senes, one of his heroes, a British paratrooper who died after being captured in Hungary.

Blessed Is the Match

"Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame

Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame"

Rozalie Jerome thanked Professor Vardi, and then proceeded to remind attendees about the upcoming Beauty for Ashes Luncheon at the Kingwood Country Club on Friday, March 22, 2024. She introduced Scott Green, the new Treasurer on the Holocaust Remembrance Association Board of Directors. He was a good friend and boss to Alexander Pollack, the visionary for the Holocaust Garden of Hope. Rozalie announced that enough donations have been received to build the third exhibit, The Web of Deception: Politics and Propaganda. She thanked all donors and encouraged more donations so that the rest of the eight exhibits can be built to the benefit of the community and those who visit virtually on www.HRA18.org.

To close out the afternoon, Steve Finkelman, by birth a Cohen, descendent of the Jewish priestly line, related that his father was also a Holocaust survivor and survivor of another death march to Mauthausen concentration camp, which was liberated by the US Army. As he pronounced the Aaronic blessing, he gave the translation, "May the Lord bless and keep you, may the Lord cause his countenance to shine upon you and grant you His greatest gift of all, Peace! Amen."

Media Contact

Joan Smith, Holocaust Remembrance Association, 1 3618577327, [email protected], https://holocaustremembranceassociation.org/

Twitter, Facebook

SOURCE Holocaust Remembrance Association

Modal title

Event Crowd
Event Crowd
Rozalie Jerome, Co-Founder Holocaust Garden of Hope
Rozalie Jerome, Co-Founder Holocaust Garden of Hope
David Lawhon, Texas A&M Professor Emeritus
David Lawhon, Texas A&M Professor Emeritus
Professor Moshe Vardi, Rice University
Professor Moshe Vardi, Rice University
International Holocaust Remembrance Flyer
International Holocaust Remembrance Flyer
Boys at Exhibit 2
Boys at Exhibit 2
Antisemitism Quote from Rabbi Sacks
Antisemitism Quote from Rabbi Sacks
Mitch Jerome, Co-Founder of Holocaust Garden of Hope
Mitch Jerome, Co-Founder of Holocaust Garden of Hope
Event Crowd Rozalie Jerome, Co-Founder Holocaust Garden of Hope David Lawhon, Texas A&M Professor Emeritus Professor Moshe Vardi, Rice University International Holocaust Remembrance Flyer Boys at Exhibit 2 Antisemitism Quote from Rabbi Sacks Mitch Jerome, Co-Founder of Holocaust Garden of Hope

Contact PRWeb

  • 11AM ET Sunday – 8PM ET Friday
  • Contact Us

About PRWeb

  • About PRWeb
  • Partners
  • Partnership Programs
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Resources

Why PRWeb

  • Why PRWeb
  • How It Works
  • Who Uses It
  • Pricing

Accounts

  • Create a Free Account
  • Log in
  • Contact Us

Do not sell or share my personal information:

  • Submit via [email protected] 
  • Call Privacy toll-free: 877-297-8921

Contact Cision

Products

About

My Services
  • All News Releases
  • Online Member Center
  • ProfNet
Cision Distribution Helpline
888-776-0942
  • Legal
  • Site Map
  • RSS
  • Cookie Settings
Copyright © 2025 Cision US Inc.