Rabbi Abie Ingber at a Darfuri refugee camp in Chad

Let’s stop history from repeating itself is the theme of this year’s Dayton Area Yom Hashoah Observance: A Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust, on Sunday, April 11 at 7 p.m. at Temple Israel, 130 Riverside Drive. The guest speaker for the community-wide memorial program will be Rabbi Abie Ingber.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Ingber is the founding director of interfaith community engagement at Xavier University in Cincinnati. For more than three decades, he served as the executive director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center at the University of Cincinnati.

Together with colleagues at Xavier, he created the award-winning exhibit, A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People. Ingber was one of the founders of the student movement for human rights for Soviet Jewry, and he remains a passionate voice for social justice.

In March 2009, he visited Darfuri refugee camps in Chad at the invitation of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to see HIAS’ psychosocial work in the camps, which provides trauma counseling, social and relocation services. There, he and the Darfuris shared their refugee stories.

During the observance, the student winners of the annual Holocaust Writing Contest and Max May Memorial Holocaust Art Contest will be recognized. Works from the art contest will be on display beginning at 6 p.m.

The Dayton Area Yom Hashoah Observance is sponsored by the Yom Hashoah Committee, a joint project of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton’s Jewish Community Relations Council and the Holocaust Committee.