Staff and residents at Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center and Gurwin Jewish–Fay J. Lindner Residences assisted living participated in the second annual #WeRemember social-media campaign organized by the World Jewish Congress (WJC). The international campaign is a visual homage to the millions of victims of the Holocaust.
Originally designated by the United Nations General Assembly, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held each year on January 27, marking the liberation of Poland’s notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Considered to be the largest global event ever to commemorate the Holocaust, WJC’s social-media campaign encourages people to post to Facebook and Twitter photos of themselves displaying #WeRemember signs, which were then livestreamed on a jumbo-tron at Auschwitz. The inaugural event, launched in 2017, reached more than 250 million people around the world; this year’s campaign doubled its reach, engaging 500 million people in more than 100 countries, with content translated in 24 languages.
Residents at Gurwin Jewish–Fay J. Lindner Residences who participated in this year’s social-media movement witnessed firsthand the atrocities of the Holocaust. Among them were survivors of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, a hidden child, and a Kindertransport refugee. Also participating was U.S. army sergeant and bronze star recipient Marvin Bochner, who helped liberate prisoners from Ohrdruf concentration camp alongside Generals Patton, Eisenhower, Bradley, and Montgomery. Haunted by memories of the horrors he’d seen, Marvin chose to display the #WeRemember sign “to raise awareness among younger generations to ensure that humanity never forgets.”
Founded in 1988 in Commack, NY, as a skilled nursing care facility, Gurwin has expanded to include a full-range of healthcare options, such as long-term care, short-term rehabilitation, ventilator-dependent care, hospice and palliative care, memory care, on-site dialysis, adult day health programs, and two home care programs. The Gurwin family also includes a 201-apartment assisted-living community—Gurwin Jewish–Fay J. Lindner Residences—and a proposed independent-living community, Fountaingate Gardens, to be built on the Commack campus. For more information, visit Gurwin.org.
