April 20, 2023
On Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) students from the Jewish Culture Club at Leigh High School gathered a group of volunteers and spent hours planting 11,000 flags, representing over 11 million victims of the Holocaust.
The students were recipients of the CUHSD Education Foundation’s Empathy Grant, which funds projects to cultivate understanding and empathy among students.
Students Edden Ofri, Itai Schechter Gelles, and Marie Levkovich did research on the persecuted groups, designed signs and banners, as well as organized the group of students that helped them deploy all of the flags with advisement from Leigh teacher Jonathan Yani.
Student organizer Itai Shechter Gelles shared “Our main motivation for this Yom Hashoah memorial was the countless people we have met who admitted to not even knowing what the Holocaust was. It is crucial for the young generation to remember the Holocaust and its victims but also what caused it in the first place - hatred and violence. We hoped that building this informational memorial would open our peer's eyes to this darker time in history.”
This year Yom Hashoah was held on the evening of April 17th to the Evening of April 18th.
The students were recipients of the CUHSD Education Foundation’s Empathy Grant, which funds projects to cultivate understanding and empathy among students.
Students Edden Ofri, Itai Schechter Gelles, and Marie Levkovich did research on the persecuted groups, designed signs and banners, as well as organized the group of students that helped them deploy all of the flags with advisement from Leigh teacher Jonathan Yani.
Student organizer Itai Shechter Gelles shared “Our main motivation for this Yom Hashoah memorial was the countless people we have met who admitted to not even knowing what the Holocaust was. It is crucial for the young generation to remember the Holocaust and its victims but also what caused it in the first place - hatred and violence. We hoped that building this informational memorial would open our peer's eyes to this darker time in history.”
This year Yom Hashoah was held on the evening of April 17th to the Evening of April 18th.