Survivors, community set for commemoration
Annual Holocaust remembrance program to be held Sunday
BY MARY ANNE ROSS
Correspondent

MONROE - The public is invited to participate in the statewide Yom HaShoah (Holocaust) Commemoration program to be held at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Monroe Township High School's Marasco Performing Arts Center.

The event, a collaborative effort of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee and the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, will honor the 6 million who perished in the Holocaust.

Survivors will speak and Gov. Jon Corzine is scheduled to attend along with other dignitaries. The master of ceremonies will be Philip Kirschner, chairman of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.

The ceremony will begin with a new dramatic work, titled "Cadence."

"The lights in the auditorium will be darkened. Survivors will walk slowly down the aisle to a live drum cadence as a rabbi reads," said Nina Wolff, chairwoman of the Yom HaShoah Observance of the Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee. "They will each carry a lit yahrzeit. Each survivor will be accompanied by two middle-schoolers from the Monroe Township Jewish Center."

There will also be two menorah lighting ceremonies - one in memory of those who died in the camps, the other in memory of courageous gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

The keynote speaker will be Monroe resident Helen Rosenzweig, who was 14 years old when she was forced to serve as a housemaid for the sadistic camp commandant Amon Goeth. Rosenzweig, who was portrayed in the film "Schindler's List," will tell the audience how she met Oskar Schindler while working at the villa and how he eventually saved her life.

Carl Lustbader, a survivor and member of the Ricklis committee, has made a solemn pledge to pay tribute to those who died by singing the "Partisan Song" each year. This song was a rallying cry for the resistance movement.

"He sings it in Yiddish and English. Members of the audience usually join in. It's very touching. It brings back their days in the resistance," Wolff said.

Judith Sherman, the author of "Say the Name: A Survivor's Tale in Prose and Poetry," was 14 when she was imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

"I found that book more moving than Elie Wiesel's 'Night,' " Wolff said.

Sherman will read a poem that she wrote for the ceremony. The Temple Beth Shalom Choir of Manalapan will sing two commemorative pieces under the direction of Cantor Ruth Katz Green. State officials will also present awards to residents of New Jersey for their efforts related to Holocaust issues.

This is the 22nd annual Yom HaShoah observance organized by the Ricklis committee.

"Henry Ricklis was a 20-year-old G.I. from Trenton when his Army division liberated the concentration camp in Dachau," said Jay Brown, president of the committee. "He was totally unprepared for the horrors he encountered during his three days in the camp. He was aghast at the inhumanity, death, and the victims he found there. It affected him deeply. He never forgot what he saw."

When Ricklis retired to Concordia in Monroe in the 1980s, he helped organize a group of survivors and others to commemorate the Holocaust and educate people about what had happened.

When Ricklis died unexpectedly at age 64, the committee was renamed in his honor. Besides the annual observance, the committee arranges for Holocaust survivors to speak at high school assemblies, and donates books and videos to local libraries. It has also participated in the "Adopt a Survivor" program where young people meet with survivors to document their story and pass it on to the next generation, and the "March of the Living" program, where former concentration camps in Poland are revisited.

"Our focus is not just on what happened in the Holocaust, but on preventing genocide to all people. We are very concerned about what's happening in Darfur," Brown said.

Brown, Wolff and other members of the committee worked closely with Dr. Paul B. Winkler and Ruth Respler of the New Jersey State Holocaust Commission to organize the memorial observance. Admission is free.

Memorial candles may be kindled from 1 to 1:30 p.m. For more information, e-mail holocaust@doe.state.nj.us or call or e-mail Wolff at (732) 605-7811 or nwolff0325@aol.com.