Traditionally, at Passover Seders around the world, bitter herbs are served to symbolize the difficult times the Israelites endured 3,000 years ago as slaves in Egypt. However, no shock to the taste buds was needed to remind those at a recent community Seder just how horrific more modern times have been for the Jews.
The fourth annual Holocaust Freedom Seder, held Sunday, April 5, was the largest since its inception, and according to its organizer and host – Queensborough Community College’s (QCC) Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives – it was the most widely attended community Seder in Queens history.
The center’s executive director, Arthur Flug, announced at the gathering that 312 people were in attendance, more than four times the number at the first Holocaust Freedom Seder. The waiting list to attend the event, which was presided over by area Rabbi Charles Agin, was 75 names long, Flug said.
“We really didn’t want to say, ‘Let’s have another community Seder,’ since we’re in the world of educating people about the Holocaust,” Flug said a few days after the event, recalling the inspiration for organizing the first Freedom Seder three years ago.
As luck would have it, in planning that initial Seder Flug stumbled upon a Hagaddah – the text that tells the story of Passover – created specifically for Holocaust survivors living in a Displaced Persons camp near Munich in 1946. The creators, a rabbi and a survivor, called it The Survivors’ Hagaddah.
According to a passage in the hagaddah – which Flug supplemented with material from other sources – a Holocaust Freedom Seder is celebrated “To maintain our tradition, to keep faith with the survivors of the Holocaust, to re-emphasize human dignity, to rejoice in freedom, to live in a world where there is always an answer for ‘why?’”
At a Seder with familiar food, music and melodies – as well as two-dozen Holocaust survivors – reflection, faith and tradition indeed took center stage.
In fact, Flug waived the $7 entrance fee for attendees who brought along a child or grandchild, and thus, helped keep alive the legacy of the Holocaust.
“We had about 15 people who did that,” Flug said. “And Ruth Turek [took] a whole table!”
Turek, who survived Auschwitz, said she brought nine of her children and grandchildren “So that they see that there is a continuation to what happened.”
Using the Hebrew word for Passover, Turek added, “It’s close to Pesach and we still celebrate the liberation of the Jewish people so many years ago. I am hoping that younger generations, future generations, will remember this catastrophe because if they remember it, maybe they’ll be able to prevent it” from happening again.
As for those second and third generation survivors, Sue Turek, Ruth’s daughter, said it is important for her children to know that the Holocaust “wasn’t just something in a history book – this was their grandparents’ life.”
In an effort “to give a different meaning” to the event, Flug tracked down Dr. Jakob Bielski, whose father Zus was featured in the recent film Defiance. His words interrupted by only the occasional crunch of matzo in the crowd, Bielski relayed the tale of his father’s and uncles’ heroics as “partisans” who fought off the Nazis and in so doing, protected a group of around 1,200 Jews.
Survival stories like the Bielskis’ came to life later in the program as the Holocaust survivors in attendance were recognized and beckoned outside for a group photograph. Their walkers serving as a potent reminder that they will not be around forever, the survivors slowly but surely made their way out into the sunshine.
“It was sort of bitter sweet,” Flug said of that moment, recalling with a hint of awe in his voice the steady stream of survivors shouting “Wait for me, I’m coming!”
