To commemorate Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) for 2026, the University of Arizona Hillel gathered students and community members on the UA Mall to bear witness together.
This was the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic that a name-reading vigil has occurred on the UA mall.
At 5:30 pm on Monday, April 13, Hillel Assistant Director Kelsey Davita Avni and Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, alongside her b’nai mitzvah students, began the commemoration. The first 45 minutes of the event were live-streamed on ArizonaHillel’s Instagram page.
Signs consisting of famous quotes about the Holocaust surrounded the stage of readers and audience members. They included quotes from Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, and more.
Community members and students were invited to read from 5:30-9 pm on Monday, April 13, and 9 am-5 pm on Tuesday, April 14, welcoming all who wished to listen. Readings took place for 15-minute increments, sharing the names and ages of those who perished in the horrors of the Holocaust, ranging from 1 year old to 99.
Student Eva Hecht read aloud a list of her own relatives who perished in the Holocaust.
“I read the names of 24 relatives; they were all first cousins, aunts, and uncles of my grandmother. It’s not a complete list of everyone who was killed in my family, but all of the names I was able to locate. I grew up almost completely without extended family because of this loss; entire potential generations of my family were erased and several of them would have also likely lived long enough for us to meet,” Hecht says.
The hundreds of names that were read aloud during the two-day vigil did not begin to scratch the surface of the 6 million Jews who were murdered.
Bound together by the responsibility and privilege of remembering those who had their lives ripped from them is no easy feat; however, sharing this understanding is something we all have in common.
As we continue to honor those who are gone in our day-to-day lives, the annual Yom HaShoah commemoration will be something we all will never forget.
