The Jewish calendar designates a sacred day, Yom HaShoah, to pause and remember the victims of the Holocaust. As our beloved survivors of the Holocaust age, we cherish every opportunity to hear their stories firsthand and commit to pass along their legacies and lessons to the next generation. Please join us for an evening as we learn from local survivor and artist Ruth Platner and view her enlightening art collection on display in our Farm House gallery. Channel your creativity and rememberance with The Butterfly Project by painting a ceramic butterfly in commemoration of a child who perished in the Holocaust that will be put on permanent display in The Hive. You will also hear from the Anti-Defamation League about how their No Place for Hate program strives to support anti-bias and bullying interventions on school campuses across the country. The evening will include light refreshments and poetry, art, and reflections.
7:00 PM View gallery, butterfly painting, mix and mingle
7:30 PM Program officially begins with sunset and poetry readings
More about Ruth Platner: Ruth grew up in Germany during the travesty of World War II and the Nazi regime. When bombs fell, she and her parents were not allowed into the bomb shelters. They lived in the attic of a family’s home in constant fear of being discovered. Ruth remembers her mother panicking each time footsteps were heard on the stairs, hiding herself and her daughter in a closet. Fortunately they were not found before Nazi Germany fell.
Ruth’s solace, even as a child came through art and when she was finally free to pursue an education. She applied and was accepted to the prestigious Hamburg Art Institute where she studied graphics and painting.
In 1949 she met and married Fred Platner also a survivor of the Holocaust and eventually settled Wausau, Wisconsin. In 1978 Ruth relocated to Carlsbad, California and earned a Master’s Degree in Educational Technology.
Ruth has participated with the Oceanside Museum of Art. She started and ran the associated Oceanside Museum of Art, School of Art. Until recently, Ruth volunteered her time and expertise at the Vista Jail, teaching incarcerated veterans a program designed by her, based on her published book titled “Meditation and Art”. She also authored an autobiography titled “War and Pieces”. According to Ruth, her art is “an expression of being in the process of investigation of the essence of life and its meaning on a personal, spiritual and universal level.”
Stacie and Jeff Cook understand commitment. They live it.
Black, Jewish and Queer. These three identities weave the fabric of who I am, but it took a long time to believe that they could exist together.
Lee and Toni Leichtag established the Leichtag Foundation in 1991 following the sale of their business. Lee and Toni were lifelong entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation and for supporting talent. They believed that only with big risk comes big reward. Both born to families in poverty, Toni to a single mother, they strongly believed in helping those most in need and most vulnerable in our community. While they supported many causes, their strongest support was for young children and the elderly, two demographics who particularly lack voice in our society.
Lifelong Baltimoreans, Rabbi George and Alison Wielechowski and their sons, 11-year-old Lennon and 9-year-old Gideon, are more than pursuing the good life in Southern California. Having moved to San Diego more than three years ago, they are fulfilling a lifelong dream.
You would think that as the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, Fernando Zweifach López Jr., who uses the pronoun they, has done all the coming out they possibly can. A queer, non-binary individual who has worked for many years on civil rights issues, López also speaks openly and often about their father’s family, Mexican-American migrant workers who tilled the fields of rural California.