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Letters to Sala: A Holocaust Commemoration -- This year, no one will attend an in-person Yom Hashoah commemoration. Without being able to gather in person, how do we gather our community for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) 2020?

Where will you be this year? Whose memory would you like to honor? Please comment on this post with their name. May their memory be a blessing.

Join us at 6p ET for this unique event. We will livestream on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Ann Kirschner and Jill Vexler will serve as co-hosts. Ann Kirschner is the author of Sala’s Gift: My Mother’s Holocaust Story and a strategic advisor in education and technology. Jill Vexler is a museum curator who has worked at leading libraries and museums around the world.

Confirmed speakers include David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, formerly director of the New York Public Library Research Library; and Michael Berenbaum, scholar of the Holocaust.

Background: In 1991, Sala Garncarz Kirschner revealed to daughter Ann the existence of over 350 letters, documents, and photographs that she saved during the five years she spent in Nazi slave labor camps. This archive is a unique and historically important lens into a lesser-known aspect of the Holocaust, slave labor camps, as experienced by a Polish-Jewish teenager, her family, her friends.

The archive was donated to the New York Public Library in 2004. Since then, it has become the subject of numerous creative projects, beginning with the NYPL exhibition LETTERS TO SALA, curated by Jill Vexler. The exhibition traveled extensively throughout the United States and eastern Europe. Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke at the opening of the exhibition in Washington DC. The exhibition is currently installed at the East End synagogue in downtown NYC. Ann Kirschner published SALA’S GIFT in 2006, which has also been translated into Polish, German, Italy, French, Czech, and Mandarin. Playwright Arlene Hutton authored the play LETTERS TO SALA, which has been produced by over 130 drama departments at high schools and colleges and regional theatre companies, as well as an off-Broadway production in 2016, directed by Eric Nightengale. Filmmakers Eddie Marritz and Tim Messler are currently editing a documentary film, SALA’S LETTERS.

This event will be produced by an experienced team led by Sree Sreenivasan, a leading consultant, speaker and trainer for nonprofits, corporations, startups and executives. Sree was previously Chief Digital Officer of major institutions in multiple industries: City of New York (working at City Hall); Columbia University (working on the future of education); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before joining the Met, he spent 20 years as a full-time professor at Columbia Journalism School. In the last year, he and his team have worked with clients in the US, UK, UAE, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, India and Canada.