eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
Whether they spoke Yiddish or Ladino, or came from Poland or Tunisia, Jews were slaughtered during the Holocaust for only one reason.
“You had the label ‘Jew’ and that is what condemned you,” said Rabbi Dr. Mitchell Serels, author and scholar of Sephardi culture and the Holocaust.
Speaking at the annual Yom Hashoa commemoration of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, Serels took an audience of more than 500 through a tour of places not usually associated with the Holocaust, including Portugal, Tunisia, Libya, and the Greek Islands.
Speaking at the East Brunswick Jewish Center April 21, Serels provided historical context to the photos and artifacts from local families displayed in the room.
There were photos of families being loaded onto train transports by the Nazis in Salonika in Greece, a family Torah scroll spirited out of Europe, and photos of murdered family members.
The last exhibit, of smiling children in Israel and elsewhere, highlighted the program’s theme — We Survived, We Flourish.
“As you reach the end of the exhibit, you can see that as we remember and commemorate, we rejoice at the growth and achievements of the Jewish people and at the brighter future before us,” said Dr. Peter Schild, a member of the commemoration planning committee from Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth.
Serels — religious leader of Magen David Sephardic Congregation of New Rochelle-Scarsdale and professor at Berkeley College in White Plains — noted there were only four possible responses for Jews as the Nazi takeover began: go into hiding (if someone could be found to provide a place to hide), flee (if they could find a place to go), go underground, or join a group like the partisans.
“The fifth choice was deadly: to choose to listen and obey,” said Serels.
Jews in neutral Portugal tried another approach, he said: Many claimed they were not racially Jewish, but rather “Lusitanian,” an ancient people of the western Iberian Peninsula. Hitler sent racial scientists to measure foreheads, cheekbones, and other body parts to examine the claim, which temporarily saved 340 individuals.
Salonika was home to almost 60,000 Jews who were heavily involved in commerce at the onset of World War II. Many were Sephardim who could trace their ancestry to the 15th-century expulsion from Portugal and Spain.
“So important were they that the port of Salonika was closed on Shabbat because there was no business to be done,” said Serels.
Then the Nazis came. In March 1943 the community was informed it was being moved to Cracow, Poland. Serels said people began buying sweaters and boots for the cold weather and exchanging money. They were loaded onto 16 train convoys for the long trip.
“Can you imagine the condition they were in when they got there?” asked Serels. “They were tired, had little food, no toilets. All they heard were the wheels clacking all the way.”
Some of the Greek Jews were sent to Warsaw to clean up the rubble from the ghetto uprising, but virtually all eventually were killed in Auschwitz.
The solemn Yom Hashoa ceremony began with a procession of survivors and students from the Writing about Survival class taught by Dr. Shirley Russak Wachtel, an English professor at Middlesex County College in Edison, who wrote a book about her mother’s survival.
One of the students, Jesse Jedrusiak of Parlin — whose grandmother hid Jews during the Holocaust — recited a meditation for the Six Million as candles were lit.
For the students, the program provided context to what they had learned in school.
“You can read about those killed or visit a Jewish Holocaust museum,” said Kaitlyn Seyffart of Edison, “but seeing and feeling this, I don’t know how to describe it.”
Cantor David Amar of the Freehold Jewish Community Center, an Israeli native of Sephardi descent, sang several selections, some with a Mizrahi flavor.
The program ended with Amar’s reciting the El Maleh Rahamin followed by Kaddish from Ray Morris of Sephardi Congregation Etz Ahaim in Highland Park.
To conclude the event, a wartime-era radio broadcast about the liberation of Bergen-Belsen — including inmates singing “Hatikva” upon liberation — was played; upon Amar’s signal, he and the audience joined in the Israeli national anthem.
Fuente: NJJN
