Annual ceremony is reminder of Holocaust’s survivors and victims
By: centraljersey.com
Staff photos by Phil McAuliffe Never 8NEVER Maria Prato Staff Writer
MONROE – It was about remembering – both the lives lost and those who survived.
More than 100 people were on hand Sunday at the Richard P. Marasco Performing Arts Center at the high school to mark the greatest mass slaughter in history, the Holocaust, when the Nazis attempted to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe. The genocide officially began in November 1938 and lasted until the end of Word War II in 1945 and left 6 million Jews and another 7 million people dead.
The event, the annual Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day observance, was sponsored by the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee.
"It’s actually amazing to see how many people gathered here today," said Nina Wolff, a committee member and organizer for the event. "(Survivors) bare their souls and emotions so that we may honor those who came before us."
This year’s theme was resistance, specifically honoring those Jews who survived the atrocities of the mass genocide, along with those who did not.
Honoree Ascher Goldstein, a Jewish resistance fighter, was a tribute to this theme, as his grandchildren retold accounts from their grandfather’s struggles.
Survivor Judith Sherman, who spent time at a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, read a poem. "Prisoner 87,621 resists," she said of herself.
"She emits no overt cry, complaint or rage – futile this is forbidden.
"She spoons the empty soup bowl to practice eating – lest she forgets.
"Dare no one say they went to death like sheep."
State and local leaders also gathered for the ceremony including Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein, U.S. Rep. Rush Holt and Mayor Richard Pucci.
During his address, Mayor Pucci told survivors that their experience, though tragic, had helped define who they had become.
"You have to have a strength that most of us on the outside will never have and never understand," he said. "You have had to strength to overcome."
Two menorahs were illuminated for most of the ceremony, the candles lit by the survivors and their children who assembled on stage, and there was somber music throughout.
The keynote speaker, Marcia Ikonomopoulos, director of the Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum, told the story of the Romaniote Jews of Greece, only 13 percent of whom survived the war.
"I needed to bring my favorite prop up here – my tissues," Ms. Ikonomopolous said. "When you stop crying you stop feeling. I lost 112 members of my extended family and I never want to stop feeling."
The greatest act of resistance was survival, she said, and those who did not perish assured the world that Hitler would not succeed in extermination of Jews.
"I do this because I have no choice," Ms. Ikonomopolous said. "I’m drained, but it is so important to tell our story – to remember."