Leon and Sarah Brett, survivors of the Holocaust, are the special guests for Yom Hashoah on April 25.

This year's Yom Hashoah commemoration, remembrance of the six million Jews and many others who were murdered during WWII, will be held April 25, 2006.

The march will begin at Tree of Life Congregation, 6719 North Trenholm Road, and end at Beth Shalom Synagogue, 5827 North Trenholm Road. This silent march begins at 5:30 pm. The service of remembrance will begin at 7 pm at Beth Shalom Synagogue.

The special guests will be Leon and Sarah Brett. Over the last several years, 500-700 marchers have come together, led in procession by the Ft. Jackson Color Guard and escorted by the joint cooperation of the police departments of Columbia and Forest Acres. Neighboring churches and homes along the route have shown support by joining the march and/or lining the way.

Sarah (Luel) Brett was born in 1924 in Pabianice, Poland, a town near the large city of Lodz. She was the first of four children born to Shlomo and Tauba Luel. In 1940, a few months after the war started, her family was moved to the Pabianice ghetto. In 1942, her family was split up, and she was resettled along with her father and one sister to the Lodz ghetto. During the last year of the war, she was imprisoned at Auschwitz, worked in an airplane factory, and then was finally sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. Only Sarah and her father survived; her three siblings and mother perished in the holocaust.

Leon Brett was born in 1922 in Skaudvile, a small town in Lithuania near the German border. He was the youngest of five children of Shmuel and Shifra Brett. In 1941, when the war reached Lithuania, he fled to the town of Shavel, where he was promptly arrested and imprisoned for several months. After release from prison, he spent the next two years living in the Shavel ghetto and working in labor camps. Eventually, he escaped from a labor camp and joined a Jewish Partisan group which enabled him to survive the war. His three older brothers were able to leave Lithuania and Europe before the war started, but the rest of his family perished in the Holocaust.

Sarah and Leon met in New York and were married in 1948. Eventually, they settled in Johnstown, Penn., where Leon opened a watch business. They have three children: Allan in Columbia; Tybe in Pittsburgh, Penn.; and Sandra in Wilmington, NC. They also have six grandchildren.

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