Holocaust Memorial Day Observance / Yom Hashoah
Monday, May 6, 2024; 7:30 P.M.
Shaarei Zedek Synagogue
91 Leinster Street, Saint John, N.B.
event information
The programme will feature the personal testimony of Shimon Walt, of Halifax. He was born in Vilna, Lithuania after the war ended. He grew up thinking there were only five people in his family: himself and his brother, his parents, and his grandmother, a fortunate few amongst the five per cent of Lithuania’s Jews who survived the Holocaust. When his wife Peggy asked for names of family members who had been killed, he couldn’t reply; what happened to them in Vilna, the “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” was never spoken about after the war.
Shimon Walt studied the cello in Tel Aviv and Boston and had a 47-year career as Assistant Principal Cellist with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Nova Scotia. He has recorded with the Rhapsody Quintet and performed for members of the Royal Family and visiting heads of state. He continues to perform as a part of the Concerts in Care program. Peggy Walt has worked for over 40 years in the arts and culture field in Nova Scotia, in the non-profit, government and private sectors and with hundreds of Nova Scotia artists and arts organizations. She was Director of Cultural Affairs for the Province of Nova Scotia, and is now Director, Atlantic Region, for the Canadian Music Centre and Administrator for Concerts in Care Atlantic. She also runs her freelance business, Cultural Affairs Consulting and Promotion.
In the summer of 2023, Shimon reluctantly agreed to return to his birthplace, meeting cousins for the first time, and visiting killing sites in Estonia and Lithuania where his family had been murdered. To pay tribute, he borrowed a cello and played at a massacre site in the Ponar Forest. The couple then travelled to Israel to share their experiences with Bela, Shimon’s 95-year-old mother. Their journey will make up part of Peggy’s forthcoming memoir: Mine to Tell: Finding My Jewish Family.
Members of the local Jewish community will light memorial candles, share music and photographs of family members impacted by the Holocaust.