Tuesday night, the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht, was a “back to school” night of sorts. Teaneck residents, high school faculty members, students, and alumni gathered at Teaneck High School for the rededication of New Jersey’s first Holocaust Center, established in 1975 by history teacher and Holocaust education pioneer Ed Reynolds. Reynolds, who marveled at the fact that he hadn’t walked “these halls” for 17 years, was the keynote speaker on Tuesday. Addressing some 60 people, he described the long educational journey that began with a telephone call, in 1975, from the Anti-Defamation League in New York.
Reynolds was asked if he and teachers Richard Flaim, Ken Turburtini, and Harry Furman in Vineland would be interested in designing a curriculum for a course or unit to teach the Holocaust in New Jersey public schools.
Until a few years ago, when people asked me about my Holocaust survivor parents, I would say that my mother, Peska Friedman, survived as a footnote in history. She was a Polish escapee from the Warsaw Ghetto who managed to get on a Hungarian train known as the Kasztner Transport. Named for Reszó/Rudolph/Israel Kasztner, the Hungarian Zionist leader and liaison to the Jewish Agency (the Sachnut), the train left Nazi territory — Budapest — in June 1944 for freedom in Palestine, via Switzerland. It was hardly an uneventful trip. Most of the passengers were held hostage in Bergen-Belsen for six months before they were released near St. Gallen, Switzerland. In the end, 1,684 people were saved, and most historians agree that the negotiations landed approximately 18,000 others in labor camps in Austria — where they were held as potential bargaining chips with the Allies instead of being deported to Auschwitz.
Bergen County is not immune from the economic turmoil affecting the rest of the nation. People have lost their safety nets, and many face foreclosure.
The situation, however, is not always hopeless, especially when neighbors reach out to help neighbors. This Sunday, more than 30 people of different ages and lifestyles came from every corner of the county to do just that, working to rehab a Teaneck house for a family facing foreclosure. The use of the house was donated to Project Ezrah, a local employment and financial counseling service.
As the Israel Defense Forces responded to the Gazan missiles raining down on Israeli cities, more than 600 men, women, and children in the area — heeding the call of the Rabbinical Council of Bergen County — gathered at Keter Torah in Teaneck on Sunday to recite psalms. While the gathering was called for 7 p.m., the synagogue was filled to capacity by 7:10, with standing room only in the lobby.
Almost 100 sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors, as well as survivors and their grandchildren, gathered at a Jewish Family Services-sponsored event at the Jewish Community Center in Paramus called “Embracing the Past to Build the Future.” The 2Gs — members of what’s called the Second Generation — came to learn about how the Holocaust shaped them and how they can help care for their aging parents.
More than 150 people from the tri-state area attended a reception last Thursday to meet Maria Kaczynska, the first lady of the Republic of Poland, who told them about her country’s planned Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
Kaczynska — acting as special envoy for Poland’s president — Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, and Polish Secretary of State Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka were warmly welcomed by Holocaust survivors and their descendants at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.
For the first time since they published their book "And Then There Were Four," Ellen Stein, Marcelle Robinson, and Lisa Klein sat before a roomful of youngsters to describe their wartime experiences. The three women — speaking at the Midland School in Rochelle Park — told how their families had fled for their lives in the face of the Nazi juggernaut that enveloped Germany in the 1930s. The fourth author of the book, Daisy Roessler, lives in Israel.
Since they have generally spoken only with adults during their book promotion tour, the authors said they were at first apprehensive about addressing some of the issues raised in the book. Nevertheless, they added, they were also excited.
Paterson Hebrew Free Loan Association comes to Bergen
One hundred six years ago, a handful of Jewish Patersonians created a "benevolent association" to provide interest-free loans to members of the Jewish community in Paterson and surrounding areas of Passaic County. In those days a Jew, often an immigrant, would come to town looking for opportunities and might need some financial assistance. He'd want to rent a room or needed directions to a kosher restaurant. The association would offer interest-free loans of $5 to $10 that would cover some living costs and possibly the rental of a horse and wagon so that the borrower could do some business and pay back the loan.
The founders were local businessmen who realized they could help local folks. Paterson's first lady, Miriam Barnert, the wife of Mayor Nathan Barnert (for whom the Reform congregation now in Franklin Lakes and the hospital still in Paterson were named) helped expand the society and enhanced the endowment for what later came to be known as the Paterson Hebrew Free Loan Association.
From left in Barnert Temple's sanctuary are Jacqueline Murekatete, Lillian Gewirtzman, and David Gewirtzman.
It's not the usual Sunday night program at a suburban temple, but then Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes — the direct descendant of the old Barnert Temple in Paterson — has always understood Holocaust survivors. Congregants were holding doing Holocaust commemorations long before they became common — more than 30 years ago.
On Sunday night they took the commemoration of Kristallnacht — an anti-Jewish riot in German on Nov. 9-10, 1938 — to the next level. Lynn Kaston, of the Advisory Board, read an article in The Jewish Standard in March '005 about an extraordinary duo. These complete opposites were making the rounds of schools to teach kids not to hate each other and that genocide is unconscionable. They had both survived genocide. Everything else was as different as can be. So Kaston brought them to speak to the students at her local public school in Kinnelon. They made such a deep impression on the school community, she then brought pair to the attention of Sara Losch, the temple's director of Jewish life and educational director. Kaston and Losch felt that these two people would make this year's annual Kristallnacht commemoration an unforgettable one.
