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Yom HaShoah 5786 Commemoration Event – IN PERSON AND STREAMING
April 14 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Our congregant, Stefanie Draisen, is a grandchild of Holocaust Survivors. The Stephen Spielberg Shoah Foundation interviewed both her grandmother and grandfather in 1998. Stefanie asked her mother, Mrs. Elaine Petersile Shapow, to be our guest presenter this year at our synagogue’s annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day program. As both of Mrs. Shapow’s parents are now deceased; and in honor of their legacy, she graciously accepted Stefanie’s request.
Mrs. Shapow grew up in New Jersey with her three siblings. She earned her B.S. and M.A. degrees in Business Education at Montclair State University; as well as her Educational Specialist degree at the State University of West Georgia. She and her husband, Michael Jay Shapow, will be celebrating their 53rd anniversary the end of this month. In addition to Stefanie, the Shapows raised Stefanie’s older brother, Eric. They are the proud grandparents of five grandsons.
Mrs. Shapow is a retired Career Technology educator. She taught a variety of Business Education and Work-based Learning courses to middle and high school students in several New Jersey and Georgia public school districts for 30 years. She spent the last nine years of her career as the Career Technology Education Supervisor in the Central Office of the Cobb County, GA Public Schools District.
Around 30 years ago, Producer Steven Spielberg had a vision to interview every living Holocaust Survivor around the world. His plan was to create a video library of their survival experiences of the concentration camps. It was his idea to provide a means for people to view, hear, and understand what happened firsthand from those who lived through this dark period in history, so that future generations would never forget what so few lived to tell.
Mrs. Shapow has reduced the eight hours of footage from her Dad’s Spielberg Foundation’s interview into several film clips. She will introduce explanations and play these clips of her father describing first-hand accounts of his experience. Mr. Petersile narrates detailed recollections and experiences as a child in Poland, as a concentration camp prisoner in Germany, and of his liberation after World War II. Mr. Spielberg hoped these visual testimonies would overcome prejudice, intolerance, hatred, and suffering, such as occurred during the Holocaust in World War II. Now, with the escalating antisemitism in today’s world, it is imperative these stories continue to resonate. As an educator, wife, mother, and grandmother; and, in alignment with Mr. Spielberg’s vision, Mrs. Shapow’s goal for this presentation is to educate the world and to ensure that mankind never ever again repeats such genocide against any one group of people because of their race, politics, religion, ethnicity, or gender orientation. This event, therefore, will be a celebration of life and of the human spirit.
