MEMORY MARATHON

On April 24, during a Memory Marathon held at the Holocaust Museum in the Memorial Synagogue on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow, nearly 300 students, schoolchildren and teachers from 13 educational institutions of Moscow met with Victor Gekht, a former ghetto prisoner, Semyon Dodik, a partisan, and Nikolai Dorozhinsky, a Righteous Among Nations. The Marathon was organized by the Russian Holocaust Center and Foundation with support from the Russian Jewish Congress. Such events have been held regularly since 2005.

Ilya Altman, co-chair of the Holocaust Center, led a tour of the Museum. Alla Gerber, president of the Holocaust Foundation and member of the RF Public Chamber, related the story of the Holocaust.

At the exit from the Museum, each member of the memorial ceremony was offered to complete a questionnaire with questions about his or her awareness about the Holocaust. The questionnaires also include questions about whether nationalism, xenophobia and extremism in Russia’s society should be counteracted. The overwhelming majority of the respondents expressed their admiration of the stories of Holocaust survivals and their impressions of the film and the performance of the chorus.  Many students gave the opinion that the government must take all possible measures to prevent any neo-Nazi or xenophobia manifestations in Russia.