While SKA classes were held on Zoom the week after Pesach and faculty and students were all in different places, Yom HaShoah at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls was commemorated on Thursday, April 8, in a particularly reverent way.
After an impactful introduction by Mrs. Bluma Drebin, SKA’s Principal, General Studies, six faculty members whose relatives had gone through the war lit yahrzeit candles and spoke about their loved ones, making the Yom HaShoah commemoration more meaningful and personal.
Classroom workshops on Zoom, coordinated by faculty members Mrs. Sheila Leibtag and Mrs. Avital Braun, highlighted the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of Jewish wartime teenagers. Through the journals and writings that they left behind, the events of the past became even more tangible to the SKA students.
Yad Vashem’s powerful video of the story of survivor Hannah Pick who was a teenager in occupied Holland was shown to the student body followed by the introduction of the Freshmen SKA Holocaust Journal website – The Strength of Our Story – presented by three Ninth Graders who read their works. Under the direction of Mrs. Leibtag, the SKA Holocaust Journal is filled with original stories, poems, and artwork and is dedicated to the survivors of the Shoah, whose legacy lives on for many of their granddaughters enrolled in the school.