Remembering the Holocaust

Decades have not dimmed the vivid memories of those who survived one of the darkest eras in human history.
Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, was celebrated at the Rockwood Park Jewish Center in Howard Beach on Thursday, May 1, and the emphasis of the evening was on leaving a legacy for future generations.
“We must remember our birthright and carry on the message,” said Matthew Oshman, Esq., who told his own family’s tale of survival - and of those who perished.
Born in a refugee camp in Florence, Italy, Oshman never knew his grandparents, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces and other family members.
“They were exterminated,” he said, “killed, along with six million other men, women and children . . . their collective crime - they were Jews.”
Oshman continued by telling of how his mother, a 17-year-old student living in northeast Poland (now part of Belarus) when the war broke out in 1939, and his father, a 27-year-old Talmudic Scholar, saw their loved ones killed.
“[They] bore witness to executions, terror and degradation,” said Oshman. “She [my mother] last saw them [her own mother and 11-year-old sister] holding hands and loaded onto a truck, never to be seen again. Another brother, Schlomo, died of starvation. Her father was clubbed to death.”
But surrounded by death, Oshman told of the indomitable will to survive.
“Many devised an escape plan [to flee the concentration camps and ghettos],” he said, explaining how a tunnel was dug and how, on September 26, 1943 his own mother and father entered the tunnel.
“Chaos reigned when they reached the other side,” he recounted. “The Nazis chased them and killed a number.”
His parents, Oshman said, were taken in by the Bielski Brigade, renowned resistance fighters
“As a result of [their] efforts, a total of 1,200 Jews were saved from certain death,” said Oshman. “These 1,200 spawned about 10,000 descendants. The survivors of the Holocaust have genes in all of us.”
Rabbi Tzvi Berkowitz agreed, saying, “It’s a gene that has to sprout, not only for this generation, but for others to come.”
The Yom Hashoah ceremony, which commenced with a candle lighting by survivors, then ended with a ray of hope as Cantor Samuels led the Holocaust Anthem Song “Zog Nit Keinmal.”
“And whenever our blood is shed,” sang the survivors in Yiddish, “It only gives us more courage than ever. The golden rays of morning will greet us And yesterday’s bitter agony will disappear . . .”
“It must never, never happen to anybody [again],” said Rita Guttsman, 86, a survivor. “I feel lucky I survived.”