On a recent visit to the Rialto theater, I sat as far as I could from other folks. I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself and my feelings. The movie was “One Life”— the story of how Nicolas Winton and others saved 669 children during World War II by transporting them to foster families in Britain. Hardest to watch were depictions of parents and children separating at train stations.

Those scenes broke open my grief from long ago when I was forcefully separated from the arms of the person who mothered, protected and comforted me for 18 months while my own parents were trying to help their parents and our family escape Europe.

Some people would question, even argue against remembering painful events. Especially when it brings to mind the horrors of World War II. My mother was like that. “Forget it,” she’d say, trying to bury her pain in some hidden corner of herself.

Yet remembering those who were dear to us is almost universal among human beings. This is especially so in our Jewish traditions, which ask us to remember and honor people and events and victories and heroism, alongside the horrors, struggles and suffering of our forebears.

One way we remember the Holocaust, or Shoah, is by honoring the memory of Jews and righteous gentiles during the annual Sonoma County Yom HaShoah observance. Six survivors will light candles in memory of the 6 million Jews who perished. Other candles are lit for other innocent victims, and for all genocides past and present.

This year, our theme involves children who suffered unimaginable terror and death in the Shoah. Most are merely entries in a database — their identities lost among their ashes. At the ceremony May 5, we will highlight an immensely successful organization that devotes itself to remembering these children. It is called Remember Us, and its mission is to bring their memories from the past into present time. Remembering them causes them to become “present and known” in our hearts and minds.

The Yom HaShoah commemoration will be at 2 p.m. May 5 at the Friedman Event Center, 4676 Mayette Ave., Santa Rosa. To attend or receive a Zoom link, registration is required by May 1 at jccsoco.org.

Peter M. Krohn is a Holocaust survivor and co-chair of the Yom HaShoah Commemoration. He lives in Santa Rosa.