Sen. Jon Ossoff to speak at Atlanta Holocaust memorial on Yom HaShoah

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Landmark Restoration of Savannah led the project to restore the Memorial to the Six Million.

Credit: Eternal Life-Hemshech/Facebook

After a year of restoration, the Memorial to the Six Million will reopen in time for Yom HaShoah, the commemoration of the Holocaust. Sen. Jon Ossoff, the first Jewish senator from Georgia, will speak at the event.

The memorial was built, designed and paid for by Atlanta-area Holocaust survivors in 1964. Built by Georgia Tech graduate Benjamin Hirsch, the memorial was placed on the National Register in 2008. Read more about the restoration project here.

The 59th annual community-wide marking of the Holocaust is being held at 11 a.m. on Sunday, May 5, at Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta.

Holocaust survivor George Rishfield is the featured speaker. Rishfield was a toddler when his parents made a gut-wrenching decision that saved his life. Lucille and Richard Rishfield tossed their little boy over a barbed wire fence, turning him over to live with family friends who were Catholic. 

Ludwick Fronckvics and his daughter, Helinka, made Rishfield part of their family for three and a half years. The Fronckvics promised to care for him as long as it was necessary. 

Rishfield will tell his story and denounce antisemitism, which he believes is worse today than at any point in the last 50 years. He will call for individuals to reject hate, and to take responsibility for making the world a better place. 

The Yom HaShoah program is held in partnership with Eternal Life-Hemshech, The Breman, the Lillian and A.J. Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. 

In honor of Yom HaShoah, The Breman exhibit “Absence of Humanity: The Holocaust Years, 1933-1945” will be free to the public from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 5.  

In Israel, Yom HaShoah is marked by the lighting of six torches at Yad Vashem, Israel’s National Holocaust Museum, to represent the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. At 10 a.m. on Yom HaShoah, Israel comes to a complete stop when an air raid siren is sounded for two minutes.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Rough Draft Atlanta.