Source: Los Angeles Times
On August 10, 2000, the Los Angeles Times reported that "about 100 Jewish high school students from New York visited with Holocaust survivors at The Jewish Federation's Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust" earlier that week to mark Tisha B'av. "The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av is a major fast day in the Jewish calendar, marking the destruction of both the First and Second Temples of ancient Jerusalem...Tisha B'av is the culmination of a three-week period of mourning, the last nine days of which are particularly intense, with observance of many customs similar to those practiced after the loss of a family member. Many Jews observe the day by fasting and refraining from all festivities. The Book of Lamentations, attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, is read in synagogues, along with poetic prayers. This date on the Jewish calendar also commemorates various other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish community, including the Jews' expulsion from Spain in 1492, the initiation of World War I in 1914, and the beginning of Nazi deportations of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942."