Remembering The Holocaust At Congregation Beth El

In 1941, Henny Rosenbaum Markiewicz Simon, then 16, was taken by Nazis from her home in Hanover, Germany, first to Riga Ghetto in Latvia, then to Strasdenhof work camp, and ultimately to Stutthof concentration camp near Gdnask. Unlike millions of others, Simon, a member of , was a survivor.

“Perseverance is something I learned in the ghetto and camps. People who gave up on life didn’t even have a chance to survive,” Simon writes in her self-published autobiography. “I remember my ailing mother’s advice when I had a frozen toe and couldn’t go to work. I was sick, cold, and so hungry. She said, ’It can’t get any worse, it can only get better. Once you hit the bottom, you can only go up. You’re young, you have to survive.’ And survive I did.”

Simon’s was one of several survivor stories presented at Beth El on Holocaust Remembrance Day in an exhibit put together by local students participating in the Encountering Survivors Program sponsored by the Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Holocaust Resource Center of the . The Yom HaShoah ceremony held at Beth El on May 2 attracted Jews and Christians alike.

The event was both sacred and secular. There were religious readings and recitation of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, and Chief Margaret Ackley read a mayoral proclamation setting aside May 1 though May 8 as official days of remembrance and calling upon the people of New London to “always remember the terrible events of the Holocaust and remain vigilant against hatred, persecution, and tyranny.”

Paraphrasing the poet George Santayana, Father Michel Belt of the observed, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” That some lessons are hard-learned was obvious as guest speaker Kate English, chair of the Connecticut Task Force on Holocaust and Genocide Education, talked about her recent trip to Rwanda and the horror stories she heard from both victims and perpetrators about the genocide that ravaged that nation in 1994.

Because this year marks the 65th anniversary of the Nuremburg Trials, the event at Beth El included a brief film on the trial’s significance and the ways in which it became a model for later international war crimes tribunals. But for many people in the congregation, the Holocaust isn’t just a part of history, it’s a personal story.

The members of Beth El congregation who lit six candles representing the six million people who died in the Holocaust had all lost loved ones. Traditionally, Holocaust survivors light the candles at Beth El. This year, for the first time, the children of survivors had that honor and, as Rosa Goldblatt remarked, ultimately survivors’ grandchildren and their children will be the ones to light the candles to keep the memories alive.

This year, it was Goldblatt’s turn. Goldblatt’s parents Henry and Sophia Drobiarz met in an American-run displaced person’s camp in 1945 and married in New York five years later. Her father had been imprisoned in work camps and concentration camps from 1940 to 1945. Subsisting on a diet of watery soup and bread, he weighed just 93 pounds when American soldiers liberated the camp on April 29, 1945. Goldblatt’s mother, Sophia, was just 14 when she was taken from her home in Poland to work in a German factory. Like many survivors, she never spoke of her experiences.

For years, Simon writes, she too kept silent about her ordeals at the hands of the Nazis. “But now I feel if we, the survivors of the Holocaust, do not tell the world about it, this shameful history will not only be forgotten but, by certain elements, even denied. That’s why we have to maintain a constant vigilance against those who would force extreme political or religious ideologies upon us. In another 20 years, none of the Holocaust survivors will be around to tell their story and, believe me, each and every one has his or her own horror story.”

The purpose of Holocaust Remembrance Day is to share those stories and keep the memory alive, so that no one ever forgets the horrors that arise when prejudice and hatred are allowed to dictate policy. “Democratic institutions are not automatically sustained but need to be nurtured,” said Rabbi Ken Alter in closing. “We must stand on guard against prejudice.”