This public recitation of names of Holocaust victims will be held around the world on Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes Remembrance Day observed this year on Thursday, April 24, 2025. We will gather in person in Atlanta and on ZOOM on April 24th for an especially moving Holocaust memorial observance. The in-person program will be held at Feldman Hall in the Selig Center (the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, 1440 Spring St., Atlanta 30309).
The
Achim/Gate City Lodge of B’nai B’rith International and
JCRC of Atlanta invite you to join us and mark Holocaust Remembrance Day either at Feldman Hall or from your homes, offices, and schools. Help us to restore the memory of those murdered during the Holocaust by bringing “Unto Every Person There is a Name” to Atlanta through an in-person gathering at Feldman Hall or a Zoom virtual webinar on Thursday, April 24th from 8:00 am to 11:00 am Live & Virtual at Feldman Hall and 11:00 am to 3:00 PM via Zoom.
We invite readers and attendees to register in advance: Registration Form – https://forms.gle/fzVjDfiryfvPEaC29. (A Zoom link will be sent to all registered users)
Participants read the names of Holocaust victims, along with their own loved ones’ names, where they were murdered, and their age at the time of death. Individuals who wish to participate as READERS of the names should indicate this on our online registration form, or contact Harry Lutz, program chair at
harry.lutz.45@gmail.com or 678-485- 8179. We will provide lists of names and you may also read the names of the family members you have lost.
The “Unto Every Person There is a Name” ceremony provides the opportunity to remember the victims of the Holocaust, six million Jews, among them one and a half million children as the names of victims are read aloud, they are remembered. The annual recitation of the names of victims is one way of posthumously restoring the victims’ names, of commemorating them as individuals. We seek in this manner to honor the memory of the victims, to grapple with the enormity of the murder, and to combat Holocaust denial and distortion.
Harry Lutz, longtime local chair of Atlanta’s B’nai B’rith Lodge “Unto Every Person There Is A Name” Remembrance Ceremony shared, “The Unto Every Person There is a Name remembrance ceremony is always an incredibly moving experience for me, both hearing names being read and reading aloud the names of victims myself. I am constantly picturing in my mind that there are more than SIX MILLION of these names.”
We are personally inviting you and your friends, family, and colleagues to attend in person, participate as a Reader, or just watch this important remembrance ceremony. We are asking local organizations to be Community Partners by publicizing the event to their email and social media networks. Please send us your preferred logo to enable us to recognize your organization in the promotion of the program and during the remembrance ceremony. You may email your logo to:
harry.lutz.45@gmail.com.
Leslie Anderson, Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Atlanta reflected, “For many on these lists, it is the only time their name will be said aloud as their entire family was murdered or there is no one left to remember them. The Atlanta community must join this global effort to memorialize the six million individuals we lost in the Holocaust.”
The project is coordinated by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in consultation with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and enjoys the official auspices of the President of the State of Israel, the Hon.Isaac Herzog. Coordinated by Yad Vashem through the efforts of four major Jewish organizations – B’nai B’rith International, Nativ, World Jewish Congress, and World Zionist Organization
, “Unto Every Person There is a Name” sets time aside on Yom Hashoah for reading aloud names of the individual lives mercilessly taken by the Nazis. The readings are done in hundreds of Jewish communities around the world. In the U.S., this
nationally observed program is organized by B’nai B’rith International, and in Atlanta, it is coordinated by the
B’nai B’rith Achim/Gate City Lodge and the
Jewish Community Relations Council of Atlanta.
The central theme for Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025 announced by the international committee is “Out of the Depths: The Anguish of Liberation and Rebirth: Marking 80 Years since the Defeat of Nazi Germany”. In early May 1945, when Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to Allied Forces, jubilation spread throughout the world. World War II in Europe had come to an end, although fighting still continued for several months in the Far East. This was a war that had wreaked destruction on a scale unprecedented in history: roughly 80 million dead; millions of refugees of many nationalities spread throughout Europe and beyond; cities destroyed and infrastructures shattered. Allied soldiers banded together on the smoldering ruins of Berlin, and military parades and public celebrations took place the world over, as well as on the European continent just freed from the clutches of the Nazi regime.
Two Holocaust survivors after liberation, Bergen-Belsen, Germany, April 1945- Yad Vashem Photo Archive 181/69
Yet one nation did not take part in the general euphoria – the Jewish people. For them, victory had come too late. The day of liberation, the one for which Jews had longed throughout the years of the Holocaust, was for the most part a day of crisis and emptiness, a feeling of overwhelming loneliness as the sheer scale of the destruction was grasped, on both a personal and communal level.
As Isaac Herzog, the President of the State of Israel said, “Gathering to publicly speak out the names of those individuals – those whole worlds – that the Nazi monster brutally sought to erase, offers a symbolic recovery of the dignity of its victims, but it is a recovery, also of humanity, for the victims, for the perpetrators and for the human race.”
Dani Dayan, the Chairman of Yad Vashem, commented, “From its inception, Yad Vashem has been dedicated to the sacred mission of collecting the names of the victims of the Shoah. To date nearly 5,000,000 names have been recorded in Yad Vashem’s online
Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, with over 2,820,000 names registered on Pages of Testimony. These pages serve as symbolic tombstones in memory of those who were murdered.
This year, Yad Vashem marks 70 years since the establishment of the Pages of Testimony campaign. This vast and unique collection gained universal recognition in 2013, when it was included in UNESCO’s
“Memory of the World” programme.
As the bearers of their legacy, we must do everything in our power to perpetuate the memory of the victims of the Shoah. By reciting their names, ages, and places where they were murdered, we preserve their memory, and remind ourselves that each man, woman and child was, and is, an entire world.”
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