Holocaust Survivors Remember 9-11

Two tragedies, over sixty years apart, were memorialized this week at the Margaret Tietz Center for Nursing Care in Jamaica.
The Tietz Center, which was founded in 1971 to care for aging Holocaust survivors, held its 18th annual Holocaust Day memorial service on Tuesday. This year’s guest speaker was Lieutenant John Atwell of Ladder Company 105, Engine 219 in Brooklyn one of the first fire companies to rush to the World Trade Center on September 11.
"For those of you who’ve been through something like this, I understand how you feel," Lt. Atwell told the audience of about 65 elderly residents. He was referring to the loss of seven firefighters from his company, one of whom was his nephew. Another two of his colleagues lost their brothers when the South Tower collapsed. "I am sorry for the loss of six million Jews, as I selfishly feel the loss of 343 firefighters."
Many audience members lost their families in concentration camps, and while the circumstances were different, their grief was comparable. "It’s a person’s loss. However he is lost, he is lost," said Mania Kitchell, who spent four years in the Lodz ghetto and then survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. "If you die of natural causes, that’s one thing. But if you die from something like [the terror attacks], it rips your heart apart."
Kitchell wasn’t the only one who was touched by Lt. Atwell’s gesture. Several people wept as the fireman told of a widow he knew, whose firefighter husband left behind 10 children. "About 70 members of my extended family disappeared in the Holocaust," said Theodore Norwat, 84, who came to the U.S. from Austria in 1937. "You really cannot feel that emotional unless you were [there]…I was pretty lucky."
After Atwell’s speech, eight candles were lit in remembrance: the traditional six for each million Jews killed in the Holocaust, one for the righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to help them, and a special eighth candle this year for those who did the same at the World Trade Center.
Atwell lit the eighth candle, and said afterward that the Holocaust and the Sept. 11 attacks had something in common. "It’s about innocent civilians that were taken. Some people say it’s an act of war, but it’s not. The six million that were murdered were not military people. It was an act of terror, just like at the Trade Center."
After the candles were lit, the center’s Rabbi Esor Ben-Sorek sang the Jewish prayers of mourning, and a moment of silence was observed. Those residents who could stand, did so, and then sang along to the Israeli national anthem and "God Bless America."
George Berlstein, the center’s chairman, emphasized that the point of the service was to commemorate tragedy, but also to celebrate the power of coping with it. "Human beings can be very cruel to each other, but you have to go on. Out of death has to come life. That is the lesson we have to take from these events, whether it’s the Holocaust or September 11."