Temple Beth Abraham, in collaboration with Rivier University, will observe Yom HaShoah on April 30 at the Dion Center on Clement Street in Nashua at 7 PM.

Our featured speaker is Hugh Baver who will update us on his non-profit organization,sosua75.org, and its attempt to honor a Holocaust story about hope, justice, and resistance in a part of the world not known as a haven for Jews.

In 1938, one country agreed to help resettle German Jewish refugees.

Most people know it was not the United States. But few guess it was the Dominican Republic (DR).

The DR’s then dictator Rafael Trujillo allowed 100,000 Jews to arrive, but in the end, only 700 made it to the DR. They settled in a colony called Sosúa, an abandoned banana plantation and small beach town on the northern coast of the island. There, a new Jewish community gradually matured, although today, only a handful of survivors remain.

New Hampshire resident Hugh Baver is determined to generate awareness of this unexplored piece of Holocaust history.

In 2010, Baver, formerly a minor league baseball player, traveled to the DR where he visited the Red Sox baseball academy led by former MLB player Jesus Alou. He stayed in touch with the MLB player and traveled again to the DR in 2013, this time learning the name of the Dominican city of Sosúa and its Jewish roots.

Baver spent this past winter in Sosúa, where he is raising funds to build a memorial park in that region. As reported in the Jewish Journal, he’s also trying to create a $25 million permanent settlement in Sosua which would offer a summer camp, a cooperative farm, a farm-to-table restaurant, botanical gardens, and … of course, a baseball diamond with stadium seating.

For more information on this story, read or listen:
pri.org/stories/2018-11-09/dominican-republic-took-jewish-refugees-fleeing-hitler-while-31-nations-looked

Also - jewishjournal.org/2018/02/08/stitching-together-baseball-and-the-holocaust/

A memorial service and candle-lighting ceremony will follow the presentation.