Sunday, April 23, 6:45 pm, Ohef Sholom Temple
Virginia Beach native and author Dr. Jay Grymes is this year’s featured speaker at the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater’s annual Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day program.
Celebrating the power of the human spirit and the enduring faith of those who witnessed and survived the Holocaust, the Commission will honor and recognize student winners of its annual Elie Wiesel Student Writing and Visual Arts competitions, as well as the recipients of the Commission’s Educator Awards. Some of the competition’s artwork will be displayed and the winning students’ essays will be available to read.
A candle lighting ceremony will conclude the program.
Grymes is author of the acclaimed Violins of Hope: Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind’s Darkest Hour. A testimony to the eloquence of man’s ability to transcend circumstances with the power of music, Violins of Hope won the 2014 National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category. Composer John Williams describes Grymes’ book as “a work of research and scholarship that forms one of the most moving chronicles in the history of music.”
Grymes will share remarkable stories of violins played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust. He will also talk about Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli violinmaker who has devoted more than 20 years to restoring these instruments—which have been played by great musicians around the world—as a tribute to those lost in the Holocaust.
Grymes’ interest in Holocaust history extends beyond his current work. He is a leading authority on the Hungarian musician, Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877–1960), a forgotten hero of the Holocaust resistance who was later falsely accused of Nazi war crimes. Grymes is the author of Ernst von Dohnanyi: A Bio-Bibliography and the editor of Ernst von Dohnanyi: A Song of Life.
A graduate of Salem High School, Grymes is a professor of musicology and chair of the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Ohef Sholom Temple is located at 530 Raleigh Avenue in Norfolk.
For more information, visit www. HolocaustCommission.org, email info@holocaustcommission. org, or call 757-965-6100.