Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration Committee

A Division of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck

February 27, 2018 Press Release Annual Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration date is April 11, 2018 Contact: Amy Elfman [email protected] 917-576-7444 The Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck will hold its annual observance of Yom Hashoa on Wednesday, April 11, 2018 at 7:30pm at Teaneck High School. The keynote speaker this year will be Dr. Moshe Avital. Dr. Avital survived six different concentration camps and was eventually liberated at Buchenwald. Traveling illegally to Palestine, Dr. Avital fought in Israel’s wars from 1947 to 1956. A well known author and speaker, Dr. Avital’s harrowing journey from victim to victor is one you won’t want to miss. The program will once again feature vocalist Jonathan Rimberg accompanied by violinist Stephanie Kurtzman and the Yeshivat Noam Choir. A highlight of the event will be a multi-generational candle lighting ceremony led by holocaust survivors and their families during which the names of holocaust victims with ties to the community will be read. A pre-event reception for survivors and their families will take place in the high school’s Media room, beginning at 6:00pm. Light refreshments will be served and Hebrew and Yiddish music will be provided by Yitzy Glicksman. During the month of April, the Teaneck Public Library will feature a special Holocaust-inspired exhibit by students of Ma’aynot High School for Girls in Teaneck. This same artwork will be exhibited in Bergenfield’s Public Library during the month of May. The event is free to the public and handicapped-accessible accommodations are available. Teaneck High School is located on Cranford Place (off Queen Anne Road). For more information, go to teaneckyomhashoa.org or call Steve Fox at 201-362-6776. To attend the reception for survivors and their families, please Annette Prager 201-638-5621.

The Teaneck town council has approved a proposal that would place a Holocaust memorial in Paul A. Volcker Municipal Green, the park in front of its town hall, along with a memorial to Africans enslaved in America. This marks the conclusion of three years of discussions with the town over the memorial. Earlier proposals would have placed the memorial in other public parks, and perhaps built a freestanding educational center. Now, with the space and scope of the memorial set, the hard work of raising money and building it can begin. The township provided for two 35-foot-square areas to be allocated to the each memorial, with more space designated for possible future memorials to other groups. Overall, the space between Teaneck Road and the municipal building will become a “Garden to Nurture Human Understanding.” “We will be looking for foundations and organizations who find the concept of a Holocaust memorial as well as a memorial for enslaved Africans on the same township green appealing,” Steve Fox said. Mr. Fox is co-chair of the Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration Committee subcommittee working on the memorial. Mr. Fox said he hopes to have fundraising materials available for the group’s Yom Hashoah commemoration at Teaneck High on May 4. He said the group hopes to break ground on the project next spring. First, it will set up an advisory board. “These will be members of the greater community who may be actual survivors, or second or third generation, or other people who feel strongly about what we are doing and can help in our fundraising effort,” he said. While the memorial will be in Teaneck, the committee sees it as serving as a regional center for remembering the Holocaust, and hopes to attract support from neighboring towns. “We will be offering individuals the opportunity to memorialize a family member or friend who was killed during the Shoah on the memorial tablets that will line the memorial,” he said. “We will also be looking into Jewish philanthropic organizations who value Holocaust remembrance and education to work with us.” There is not yet a fundraising target. But the more money is raised, Mr. Fox said, the more the committee can advance its educational mission. “We are looking at this as not just a memorial but as a mini museum. We’re going to have an entire educational process.” This may take the form of an interactive app that would provide information beyond that given on the panels planned for the memorial. The committee also hopes to arrange with the library to provide an indoor extension of the memorial, “perhaps housing different artifacts or screens for education purposes.” The group also is considering producing a video featuring interviews with local Holocaust survivors. “Not to do a 90 minute interview like you see in a Spielberg thing, but to ask each one a few questions and put them together in one presentation,” Mr. Fox said.

The Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck will hold its annual observance of Yom HaShoah on Wednesday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Teaneck High School. The keynote speaker this year is Helga Marx Silbermann. In 1938, 13-year-old Helga ran with her grandfather into their burning shul to rescue a Torah scroll. During the war, she was in a position to warn Jews destined for death, saving many lives. Her story and her will to survive with the Torah scroll she helped save are nothing short of a miracle. The musical presentation will once again feature Jonathan Rimberg on piano and singing, and Stephanie Kurtzman on violin. Jonathan will be joined by the Yavneh Academy Choirs, directed by Marsha Motzen, for the performance of the Hymn of the Partisans. The evening will commence with the Yavneh Academy Choirs’ performance of the American and Israeli national anthems. A pre-event reception for survivors and their families will take place in the high school’s Media room, beginning at 6 p.m. Light refreshments will be served and Hebrew and Yiddish music will be provided by Yitzy Glicksman. The event is free to the public and handicapped-accessible accommodations are available. Teaneck High School is located on Cranford Place (off Queen Anne Road). For more information, go to teaneckyomhashoa.org or call Steve Fox at 201-362-6776. To attend the reception for survivors and their families, please call Dena Levie at 917-334-0937. During the month of May, the Teaneck Public Library will feature Holocaust-inspired artwork by students at Teaneck High School and Yavneh Academy, past and present. The exhibit will include black and white pieces as well as those in color that are on loan from the schools’ Holocaust collections of student works. New this year, the artwork will be exhibited at the Bergenfield Public Library during the month of April.

Teaneck—The Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck will hold its annual observance of Yom HaShoah on Thursday, April 16th at 7:30 p.m. at Teaneck High School. The keynote speakers this year are Howard and Nancy Kleinberg who first met in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where Nancy saved Howard’s life. Their story of their survival and reunion is nothing short of a miracle. For up-to-date information on the event, visit www.teaneckyomhashoa.org. A Pre-Event Reception for Survivors and their families will be held before the event commencing at 6pm. The Committee is seeking six families for “candle lighters” to participate in the program. To qualify as a candle lighter, there must be three living generations (including a survivor) from each family who are willing and able to participate in the ceremony on stage. For more information and to participate, contact Regina Koenig at 201-387-1511 or [email protected] The Committee has also announced the launch of their a Facebook page and encourage all to visit the page and click on LIKE.Go to: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Teaneck-Holocaust-Commemoration/788249994586988?ref=hl Visitors will be able to see what is posted on the page including information about this year’s keynote speakers Howard and Nancy Kleinberg, other news about this year’s event and photos from past events. The Teaneck Commemoration Committee encourages everyone to Like the page and copy, paste and email the link to friends and family. The Committee is also currently seeking copies of pre-war and post-war European family photos to be shown at this year’s event. To send photos, pictures should be cropped before scanning (this can usually be done in the “preview mode” of the scanning software) and scanned at 300 dpi. Al photos can be emailed with Yom Hashoa Family Photo in the subject. Please include the family name in the body of email and mail photos to Steve Fox at HYPERLINK [email protected]

Moshe Baran is not your run-of-the-mill 92-year-old. A retired real estate manager, Moshe has the distinction of being a Holocaust survivor and one of a dwindling number of partisans still alive to tell his story. His story is one of determination, survival and courage. But it is his resolve to speak about his experiences to keep the memories of those who were murdered alive that sets him apart. His Internet campaign to stop hate makes him even more remarkable. And so, he will be telling his story at the 33rd Annual Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration. Moshe grew up in Horodok, Poland, a town with over 300 Jewish families. When the Nazis arrived in the spring of 1942, he was rounded up and sent to Krasne, the region’s last ghetto, where he worked 12-hour shifts laying railroad ties to build a supply line to the eastern front. Finding out that Horodok would be destroyed, his family escaped the massacre by hiding in an underground bunker on an uncle’s property. They then joined Moshe in Krasne. Through friends, he learned that there was a resistance movement in the forest. He yearned to become a partisan. But the admission fee was to bring a gun. He contacted friends working in a warehouse where the Germans collected guns abandoned by the retreating Russian army and a plan was hatched. They smuggled parts into a junk pile and Baran retrieved them. “One of the German guards was a mensch,” he said. “He let me take junk from the pile and ironically helped me to survive. Because of Lieutenant Miller, I am sitting here.” A woman in the ghetto knew where other escapees had set up camp and agreed to show them if they took her children out. They dug their way under a fence and walked 15 miles through the night to join the partisans. His first day as a partisan gave him a new freedom. “It was the first time I looked up and saw the sun. Until then, we were living like hunted animals and were always afraid of what would happen next.” “One of the German guards was a mensch,” he said. “He let me take junk from the pile and ironically helped me to survive. Because of Lieutenant Miller, I am sitting here.” As a member of the partisans, he helped sabotage railways, planted explosives, ambushed German trucks and cut their supply lines. He helped Russian partisans retrieve weapons from Russian airdrops by setting fires to mark the spot for the drop. He also arranged for the rescue of his brother, sister and mother. (To his knowledge, she was the only mother from his shtetl to survive.) His father had stayed behind in Krasne to care for his sick sister. They died when the ghetto was liquidated. For nearly two years, Baran lived in hiding. When the Germans mounted an offensive against the partisans, the group moved deeper into the swamps where they eventually confronted the Germans. He survived the gun battle that ensued. In July 1944, the region was liberated and he was conscripted into the Russian Army where he stayed until the war ended in May 1945. Since there was no home to return to, Baran made his way to a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria. There he met his future wife, who had survived Treblinka. They married in the newly formed State of Israel and, in 1954, they moved to New York. The Barans moved to Pittsburgh in 1993 to be close to their daughter and it was then that Moshe began speaking to groups about his wartime experiences. “There are many people who are not alive to tell their story and there are others who are not able to speak about it. I am fortunate to be able to tell my story and this makes up for the pain of reliving the horrors,” he says. In September, 2012, Moshe began writing a blog called “Language Can Kill – Messages of Genocide.” It was dedicated to his late wife who stressed how important it is to disavow the language of hate. When asked why he started an anti-hate blog at the age of 91, he said, “Before the war, people said that they didn’t know what was going on and didn’t do anything to stop the Germans. Today, we know what is going on with the hatred spewed by terror groups and others, as well as by oppressive regimes. For me, doing nothing is not an option.” Mr. Baran will tell his story at the annual Teaneck Yom HaShoah Commemoration on Monday, April 8th in Teaneck High School. For more information go to www.teaneckyomhashoa.org. By Steve Fox

It was an emotional, bittersweet Teaneck Holocaust commemoration this year. Perhaps it was because long-time residents Arlene Duker, who lost her daughter to Arab terrorists many years ago, and Rabbi Johnny Krug, a son of survivors and dean of student life and welfare at Frisch High School, read the family names of those who were lost in the Shoah. Among them were Backenroth, Flanzbaum, Malca, Jacobowitz, Adler, Bacall, Goldberg, Greenwald, Morris, Kraar, Taffet, Lewkowitz, Weissler, Rosenberg, Hampel, Stern, and many other familiar names – all neighbors, all second generation, all families with decades-deep roots in Teaneck, tied together by the tragedies of the Shoah and the triumph of survival. Teaneckers have played an important role in shaping Holocaust education since 1979, so it was appropriate for Deborah Lipstadt, the keynote speaker, to talk about the Adolf Eichmann trial and the politics surrounding it. Earlier in the evening, she told The Jewish Standard that the trial 50 years ago gave the world a universal view of the Shoah, because for the first time, survivors gave testimony. As a rule, even during the Nuremburg Trials, they did not. She said, “They told the story like it wasn’t told before. Survivors had spoken, but were not listened to until then – and it made a big difference. It is poignant to talk about it as so many of them are dying, but I want to give voice to the survivors.” At the commemoration, she told the unvarnished story of Eichmann’s capture, explained a host of complicated issues surrounding the trial, and concluded by telling the audience about a Rwandan woman who met survivors at Yad Vashem and asked them to teach her. According to Lipstadt, she said, “I want people to listen to me the way they listen when Holocaust survivors speak.” Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, and his sons Elisha and Avram, also long time Teaneckers, sang Ghetto Tangos, songs from ghettos and forests, reflecting emotions from despair to resistance, from Nisht Kein Roszinkes, Nisht Kein Mandlen to the Partisaner Hymn. Steve Fox, the Holocaust Commemoration Committee co-chair, asked for two minutes of silence for the victims in Toulouse, France. Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin read the town council’s proclamation, and Rabbi Yaakov Neuberger of Beth Abraham read a psalm. The most emotional moments were those of the different candle lightings – the traditional multi-generational lighting, and something new: local high school students – third and fourth generation – who came to the stage with their own candles, and described the Shoah experience of the person for whom they were named. They were living proof of Jewish survival from generation to generation, and you could feel the audience inhale with pride. Sadly, there were far fewer survivors participating, as many of them have died in recent years, or are homebound. As ther numbers dwindle, Teaneckers at the commemoration seem to draw a little closer to one another as they, who are also aging, realize they are witness to the witnesses, and are the ones who authentically carry their parents’ memories. They are the torches of remembrance and teachers of the lessons learned from those terrible days. The service concluded with the recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish by Rabbi Yosef Adler, rabbi of Congregation Rinat Yisrael and head of school of the Torah Academy of Bergen County.