Rabbi S. Jerome Wallin, from Sacred Heart University's Campus Ministry team, presided over the service and said, "This is a moment of caring, loving respect. This gathering honors the Holocaust victims and all people of good will. We must remember so that we can become better people and reach out to others in need."

Opening remarks were offered by Thomas Forget, Ph.D., vice president of Academic Affairs. Dr. Forget began by saying that his first response to the Shoah was silence. He then spoke of his happy boyhood memories filled with the sounds of passing trains on the Long Island Railroad. "It gave me a sense of excitement knowing that the people on the trains were coming and going to work, home, or to wonderful places I had never been," he said. "But now, after visiting the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland, the sound of trains fills me with fear, guilt, prayer, despair and hope. The sound of trains is now a painful reminder of the tracks of death. We are here today to recall so that we can remember that the human journey is from fear to hope, misunderstanding to peace."

Mr. Zelig Preis, a Holocaust survivor now living in Trumbull, Connecticut, spoke of his horrific experiences in several concentration camps. He said, "It is difficult to believe, but at that time, very few people seemed to care about us. There was a total disregard for human life. Jews were accused and abused. Any resistance was met with swift and brutal force. We had no rights and everything was taken from us, even our loved ones. My own brother was senselessly shot." He continued, "People are saying that these things never happened. It is an inhumane act to deny those lives that were lost to evil the decency of remembrance."

Mr. Preis concluded by speaking especially to the Sacred Heart University students, "We have a responsibility to speak out against injustice. Keep your eyes and ears alert. Stand up and be counted. Develop a higher consciousness that demands justice in places like Bosnia and Kosovo today."

Following a multimedia presentation entitled "The Holocaust-Don't Let History Repeat Itself," assembled by Laura Kaufman-Tofinchio, manager of Admission Operations, seven memorial candles were lit. Six candles honored the memory of the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis, and one candle represented all the other people who died at the hands of the Nazi terrorism.

The service concluded with the chanting of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayers for the dead, and a memorial prayer. Cantor Y'Shaya Gramma's voice echoed from the depths of the darkness of the Shoah and called out for a light of hope.

Dr. David L. Coppola, director of conferences and publications of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, said after the service, "This event is significant for Sacred Heart University because it demonstrates our solidarity in prayer and practice with the Jewish people. This is a time for us to reverently remember the past and to courageously strengthen our resolve to resist discrimination, oppression and terrorism in the future. To remember is a beautiful, essential and painful human action."

At the 1998 CCJU Nostra Aetate Awards and Lecture, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, and John Cardinal O'Connor, archbishop of New York, both asked that Catholics pray with their Jewish brothers and sisters on the 27 of Nissan, in remembrance of the Shoah and as a sign of Catholic-Jewish solidarity.