One Appalachian community is responding to violence of the past and present targeted at religious groups.
At their annual reading of the names ceremony, the B’nai Sholom Synagogue in Huntington, West Virginia, brought together community members in a ceremony to remember victims of the Holocaust.
Just a few blocks away, community activists gathered to also honor the victims of the Easter suicide bombings in Sri Lanka.
The remembrances came the same day as the latest attack on the Jewish community in America– a shooting at a California synagogue.
Bobby Lee messer is homegrown West Virginia videographer and producer. He grew up in Huntington, as did his father and his father before him and so on. After living in various towns and cities long far west of the Ohio River for more than 20 years, Messer has returned to his hometown and is pleased as punch to be covering the people and landscape of his home state.
This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit, collaborative newsroom telling the complex stories of the region that deserve to be heard. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.
