page_title: Sigmund Rolat
section_title: Recent public appearances
hierarchical_section_title: Sigmund Rolat / Recent public appearances
caption_attribution_description: Sigmund Rolat at Congregation Habonim 2015 (candle lighting)
context_page_description: Sigmund A. Rolat or Zygmunt Rolat is a philanthropist, art collector and businessman. He is a founding donor of Polin, The Museum of the History of Polish Jews and a key supporter of numerous charitable endeavors.
context_section_description: On June 11, 2015, at an event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio honored Rolat, by proclaiming it  "Sigmund Rolat Day" in the City of New York.
  On April 18, 2015, Rolat spoke at a March of the Living event at the University of Warsaw honoring Survivors, Liberators, and Righteous Among the Nations. In his speech to students from around the world, he advocated for the building of a monument to the Righteous Among the Nations in Warsaw. He said: "We will say thank you properly and in years long from now your children will come here and they will also see that monument to thank those who saved us.."
  On April 16, 2015, Sigmund Rolat was the guest of honor at the International March of the Living memorial ceremony in Auschwitz-Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day. His eloquent speech delivered to approx 10,000 young people and survivors appeared in both Polish and English media and was reprinted in more than 50 newspapers.
  In his speech, Rolat stated that he had no choice but to remember the Holocaust, but challenged the young people – who do have a choice – to also remember, giving them four reasons to do so:  solidarity with those who survived, the simple decency of keeping alive the memory of the victims by mourning their loss, and fear that this might happen again to others unless we learn from history. He concluded his remarks with a fourth reason to remember: gratitude "to those Poles who – like my Elka – risked their lives to save Jews from the chimneys of Auschwitz. From the ghetto walls of Czestochowa. From the abyss. And our gratitude toward them is the fourth reason to remember."
  On December 3, 2014, Rolat, Joshua Bell and Budd Mishkin took part in a discussion following the screening of "The Return of the Violin". The documentary film, sponsored by Rolat, chronicles the journey of the Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius now owned and played by Bell.
  On November 8, 2014, Rolat spoke at the Toronto premiere of the "Return of the Violin", as part of Toronto's Holocaust Education Week. "We opened the Museum on the 28th (of October 2014) 10 days ago. It was a wonderful, wonderful opening. I certainly am now so happy that really the most important task of my life which was Polin, The Museum of the History of Polish Jews [is completed] and that young people on the March of the Living who are coming to Poland will no longer see only the Auschwitz and Treblinka camps – they will also find out about [our] glorious, glorious thousand years in Poland and how much we accomplished in those days."
  After the premiere of the "Return of the Violin", 14-year-old Tali Katz, a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, composed "Six", inspired by the bravery of Sigmund Rolat, as the only member of his immediate family to survive the Holocaust.
caption: Sigmund Rolat lighting a memorial candle on Kristallnacht at Congregation Habonim, Toronto Holocaust Education Week 2014
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