Etz Chaim Synagogue is honored to host the community-wide Yom Hashoah Holocaust Memorial Event this year. As the years go on and there are fewer Holocaust survivors among the living, it becomes more important than ever to gather and remember the Shoah and all those that perished in the years of unimaginable hell.

Our community is honored to host Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, who currently serves as  University Professor of Jewish History and Jewish Thought and Senior Scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future, at Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Jacob Schacter is also the son of Rabbi Herschel Schacter, who was the first American Jewish chaplain to liberate the concentration camps as part of the liberating forces in 1945. Rabbi Herschel Schacter found a young Jewish boy in Buchenwald called Lulek, who asked him  ‘Does the world know what happened to us?’

This boy eventually became the world famous Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who is currently the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. He and a colleague, Rabbi Robert Marcus, helped arrange for their transport to France — a convoy that included Lulek and the teenage Elie Wiesel — as well as to Switzerland, a group personally overseen by Rabbi Schacter, and then to Israel.

Rabbi Herschel Schacter passed away in 2013 at the age of 95. We are honored to have his son Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter come to Jacksonville to speak about his father's' experiences and in his memory.

The event will be held Thursday, May 2 at 7 p.m. at Etz Chaim Synagogue, 10167 San Jose Blvd., Jacksonville. For more information, call 904-262-3565.