'Songs Of Hope': Musician To Play Viola Saved From Holocaust In Bergen

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — In advance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a nationally recognized scholar is performing songs at a Bergen County synagogue that evoke stories of Jewish prisoners in World War II ghettos and concentration camps.

At 11 a.m. on Jan. 17, Tamara Freeman, an adjunct college professor of Holocaust culture and education, will play a 1935 viola originally owned by a Holocaust victim, and tell the prisoners' stories using words and music.

Freeman will present "Songs of Hope and Solidarity: Music Composed in the WWII Ghettos and Concentration Camps" at Temple Avodat Shalom in River Edge. She will also lead community singing of "familiar and emblematic" songs of the time, a news release said.

Ahead of Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, Freeman is honoring the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism. Designated in 2005 by the United Nations, Remembrance Day commemorates the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

The program is part of the Jewish Community Center of Northern New Jersey Active Seniors, now housed at the synagogue on Howland Avenue.

$5 suggested donation includes catered kosher lunch. Advance registration required. Visit jccnnj.org/active-seniors/ or call (201) 666-6610 to register.