Leora Tech urges Concord audience to ‘remember the people’ at Holocaust Remembrance program

Concord ' On April 6, 2026, the Concord Human Rights Council and the Concord Select Board hosted a Holocaust Remembrance program at the Town House in which Select Board Chair Mark Howell read an official proclamation and keynote speaker Leora Tech urged the community to center survivors' stories in public memory.

"I'm Court Booth. I'm a co-president of the Human Rights Council," the Council co-president said in opening remarks, noting the event was being recorded and live-streamed and asking the audience to join in remembering a recently deceased volunteer, Shelley Brown.

Mark Howell, chair of the Concord Select Board, read the board's proclamation designating a memorial service for April 12, 2026 and naming April 12'19, 2026 as days of remembrance for Holocaust victims. The proclamation recited the history of the Holocaust and called on the town to rededicate itself to opposing hatred and discrimination.

In the keynote, Leora Tech framed remembrance as a practice that must keep victims and survivors at the center. "I want to remember the people ' to think about people's stories and remember the victims of the Holocaust and the survivors who went through the most horrible experiences," she said, and described a lamp in her mother's hometown of Lublin, Poland, that burns in memory of the city's Jewish population.

Tech told the audience that before World War II some 43,000 Jews lived in Lublin and that the Brama Grodzka NN Theatre Centre (transcript variants appear as "Brahma Gratzka/Brahma Groska" in the event record) preserves that memory through public rituals, street markers and an exhibition that holds an empty placeholder for each prewar resident. She also cited national figures in her talk, saying "3.3 million Jews lived in Poland before World War II" and that "90% of those people were murdered during World War II," attributing those historical totals to her summary of the country's wartime losses.

Tech interwove personal family history with larger preservation projects. She described how her mother and other relatives obtained false identities and survived by sheltering with non-Jewish families, later writing a memoir, Dry Tears, and pursuing scholarship about rescue and memory. Tech also described her Nishoma online video library and her Bridge to Poland program, which document Polish individuals and groups who have worked to name victims, maintain cemeteries and renew local public remembrance.

The keynote included profiles of Polish organizers Tech met during her trips: Darush Popula, who Tech said leads cemetery restoration and victim‑naming efforts, and Enga (transcript: "Enga/Enginga") Marchinska, who Tech described as cleaning mass graves and working to secure respectful reburials. Tech recounted one case in which remains were reinterred in a Jewish cemetery in Tarnów after organizers obtained permission from Poland's chief rabbi.

After the prepared remarks Tech fielded audience questions about the Nishoma archive and local remembrance practices. Organizers thanked volunteers, highlighted bystander training the Council is piloting, and invited interested residents to get involved.

Why it matters: The program combined an official municipal proclamation with first‑person testimony and examples of international memory work, signaling local leaders' willingness to make remembrance part of Concord's public life and civic education. Tech's talk emphasized naming victims and supporting projects that place Jewish history in present public space.

The meeting closed with a brief musical performance and expressions of gratitude to the organizers and Minute Man Media for livestream support. The Town House program concluded with an invitation to attend the Select Board's memorial service on April 12, 2026 and to participate in upcoming bystander training opportunities.