Jews, Israeli and German Diplomats Commemorate Holocaust

Stephen Ross spoke at a commemoration of the Holocaust as his son, Michael, stood by him. The elder Ross recalled his survival through 10 prison camps and the pain of learning that his entire family had been murdered. (Photo: TheJewishAdvocate.com)

The following article is from the Jewish Advocate.

More than 400 members and friends of the Boston Jewish Community gathered on a rainy afternoon last Sunday (May 11, 2008) to commemorate the Holocaust at Faneuil Hall.

The program featured firsthand accounts from survivors, including Stephen Ross and Fred Manassee, and challenged participants to ponder the power of words, the horrors of a genocide that will forever mar the Jewish people, and offered a glimpse of hope through memory.

"Every year, we are closer to the moment when the Holocaust ceases to be a living memory and become history," Nadav Tamir, consul general of Israel to New England, told the crowd. "We must always try for the moral high ground, acting as morally and ethically as possible, even when defending ourselves from our enemies. As Israelis, Jews, and members of humanity, we should be the standard bearers of ‘never again.'"

Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Council's commemorating organizing committee, noted the danger of forgetting, and how crucial it is to remember, before there is no one left to remember.

"The generation of survivors is dwindling," he said. "The memory should not be taken away because the witnesses are no longer here."

Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, the daughter of the late Congressman Tom Lantos of California, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, offered a moving tribute and lit a candle, along with her mother, in his honor.

"Having faced the ultimate evil, he feared nothing," she said.

Dr. Wolfgang Vorwerk, consul general of Germany to Boston, who is set to leave his post after four years and return home to Germany, remarked that he "came to this day of mourning to pay my deepest respects to the Holocaust survivors and my profound respect to the many who did not survive."

And, alluding to the quiet rain above Faneuil Hall, added, "Even the skies are crying on Yom HaShoah."

Perhaps the most heart-wrenching speech at the commemoration, falling on the month in which Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, came from Holocaust survivor Stephen Ross of Newton, Mass..

Ross, who stood on stage with his son, Boston City Councilor Michael Ross, recounted a story of unthinkable survival through 10 prison camps, separation from his family in Poland when we was eight years old, and the brutality of Auschwitz where he was subjected to inhumane slavery, sexual abuse by pedophile guards, and observed cannibalism.

His arm still bears the tattooed number 148127.

"I prayed God to stop punishing me," he said, only choking up when speaking about the moments after liberation when he learned that his entire family, including seven siblings, had been murdered. "It was hard for me to go on living. I live with my memories, and will die with them."

Two middle-school children read from diaries of children who were believed to have been their ages when they died in concentration camps. One entry ended in the middle of a sentence, presumably because of her death.

The writer of the second diary survived life in the Vilna Ghetto, escaped during a liquidating, and was later shot to death with his family.

The ceremony was followed by a somber walk to the New England Holocaust Memorial, as the crowd uttered the Mourner's Kaddish under a solemnly appropriate grey sky.

Source: TheJewishAdvocate.com

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