Holocaust Remembrance Day: Gift Funds Annual Observance and Lecture

Holocaust Remembrance Day: Cedars-Sinai remembers. On Yom Ha’Shoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, the medical center solemnly honored the six million Jews, and millions of others, who perished under Nazi rule, one of the darkest periods in history.

Cedars-Sinai memorialized the day with its 40th-Annual Yom Ha’Shoah Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration at the medical center on May 6th. An endowment from the Roya and Joel Geiderman Family Trust supports the hospital’s annual tribute, as well as The Joel Geiderman, MD, Lectureship.

“Cedars-Sinai sincerely thanks the Geiderman family for their generous support of this annual commemoration,” said Arthur J. Ochoa, JD, senior vice president of Advancement and chief advancement officer for Cedars-Sinai. “Especially now, the remembrance of one of the darkest chapters of human history is critically important.”

Geiderman is co-chair of the Cedars-Sinai Department of Emergency Medicine, medical director of the Emergency Department and professor of Emergency Medicine. He also serves as vice chair emeritus of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“Events like the Yom Ha’Shoah commemoration, the Martin Luther King Day celebration and other community outreach efforts, including those for the unsheltered, exemplify this institution’s commitment to working for the greater good,” said Geiderman. “My family considers it a gift to be able to contribute to those efforts.”

This year’s keynote speaker was Malka Z. Simkovich, PhD, a respected scholar and authority on Jewish history and the Hebrew Bible. Simkovich is director of Catholic-Jewish Studies, as well as the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies at Catholic Theological Union. She’s also a Leon Charney Fellow at the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies and a Kogod Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She’s authored numerous books, receiving the 2019 Association of Jewish Libraries Judaica Reference Honor Award for one of her works. Her latest book, Letters from Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity, will be released in June 2024.

“With profound sincerity and deep sorrow, Cedars-Sinai stands with the world in remembrance of the many souls lost during the horror of the Holocaust,” said Thomas M. Priselac, president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai, and the Warschaw Law Chair in Healthcare Leadership. “As an institution founded on the tenets of the Jewish faith, we share in the dedication of this day to eschew the spirit of hate that resulted in the Holocaust. Newswise/SP