Monroe Township High School students Kelly Craig, left, and Sydney Normil escort Holocaust survivor Carl Lustbader during the annual Yom Hashoa commemoration of the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee.
May 20, 2008
Almost 1,000 people gathered at Monroe High School May 4 to pay homage to those who died in the death camps, to recognize survivors, and to celebrate those who risked their lives to save Jews.
The annual Yom Hashoa program of the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee drew politicians, students, and many of the Holocaust survivors living in the area’s adult communities.
It was cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, Second Generation Holocaust Survivors, the Jewish congregations of Concordia and Clearbrook, and Congregation Etz Chaim Monroe Township Jewish Center.
Ricklis committee chair Jay Ellis Brown cited the genocides that have continued to plague the world, including the one currently in Darfur.
“The committee is supporting this cause until there is no place for hatred or intolerance in the world,” said Brown.
Survivors, holding yahrzeit candles, were led to their seats by Monroe Township High School students holding red roses.
Serving as a backdrop were two large tables with hundreds of yahrzeit candles, lit just before the program by individuals in memory of murdered relatives or survivors who had since died.
Survivors, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were called up to light menoras in memory of those lost in various camps and ghettos or to honor a survivor relative.
Monroe superintendent of schools Dr. Ralph Ferrie said the district had undertaken a program where students videotape survivors’ testimony.
The goal is to “learn about the Holocaust and ensure it never happens again,” he said. “We must ensure our children learn to love tolerance and learn to despise hatred.”
The evening included tributes to Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and champion of human rights who died on Feb. 11, and to Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and spent years reuniting them with surviving family members after the war. (Sendler died at age 98 on May 12.)
Ora Gelb, 13, of Bedford, NY, was joined by her mother, Ilana, and her grandmother, Judith Sherman of Monroe, as she recited an original poem about her grandmother’s suffering in the labor camps at age 13.
Moshe Gimlan, left, helps Michael Klein light a yahrzeit candle in memory of those lost in the Holocaust during the May 4 Yom Hashoa program in Monroe. Photos by Debra Rubin
“We are the last generation living with Holocaust survivors,” she said. “We must be their memory, their voice.”
Shirley Russak Wachtel, an English professor at Middlesex County College in Edison and author of a book about her mother’s ordeal, was joined at the commemoration by a group of her students.
Cindy Tran, 19, of Piscataway said she found the history of the Holocaust “intriguing,” adding, “I feel pretty lucky” when contrasting her own life with that of people like Wachtel’s mother.
Wachtel was joined in a panel discussion by survivor William Schrimmer of Monroe and Barbara Moorman of Woodstock, NY. Moorman’s parents, Aart and Johtje Vos, sheltered 32 Jews — including Monroe resident Ilse Loeb — and four dissidents in Holland during the war.
Wachtel said her book and her teaching are her way of spreading another lesson from her parents.
“There are still genocides going on and it is our responsibility to know what’s going on in this world and help others see that we are all the same family,” she said.
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