Death camp uprising remembered

A voice from the past and some voices of the future punctuated a Holocaust Remembrance Community Concert at a Jamaica nursing and rehabilitation center recently.
The concert, on Sunday February 10, brought Cantor Sol Zim and the JEM Children’s Choir to entertain about 100 residents, staff, visitors and elected officials in the lunchroom at the Margaret Tietz Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Zim, the cantor for the Hollis Hills Jewish Center for nearly 40 years, sang “I Believe,” and “Remember” (Z’Chor) as a soloist or with the choir.
Senator Frank Padavan, who secured a $1.5 million allocation for the center in the recent past, presented the center with a proclamation, as did State Assemblymembers Mark Weprin, Rory Lancman and Nettie Mayersohn, and City Councilmembers James Gennaro and David Weprin.
As chair of the council’s Finance Committee, Weprin oversaw the city’s matching contribution to Padavan’s allocation to the center.
Arthur Flug, the executive director of the event’s co-sponsor, the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center & Archives at Queensborough Community College, introduced Philip Bialowitz, a survivor of the uprising and mass escape from Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in eastern Poland.
Bialowitz, who currently resides in Little Neck, was sent with his brother, sisters and 7-year-old niece to the Sobibor camp. In a matter-of-fact tone, Bialowitz related his story, from the immediate execution of his sisters and niece, through the day he participated in the uprising and escape from the camp where at least 250,000 Jews and others were murdered.
Without looking at his notes, Bialowitz related the words of Alexander “Sasha” Pechersky, a Russian Jewish soldier sent to Sobibor, who led the uprising, on October 14, 1943.
“If by chance someone should live and escape, he should remember it is his duty to be a witness and to tell the world about this place and what happened here.”
After 65 years, Bialowitz is one of only 48 survivors of the Sobibor camp. Of the 600 inmates of Sobibor that day, barely 100 survived the war.
He eventually joined Polish partisans and fought as a guerrilla until the end of the war. For 6 decades, Bialowitz has kept faith with Perchersky’s charge.
There was a long silence when he finished his story. Those who heard it would believe, and remember.