(Courtesy of Fair Lawn Jewish Center) Congregation B’nai Sholom/Fair Lawn Jewish Center recently commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a full program attended by a diverse group from the community.
Keynote speaker was Sam Rosmarin, the son of two Holocaust survivors and a member of Generations Forward, a group of second- and third-generation individuals sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center of White Plains. His mother, Marin, was 14 when the Nazis invaded Poland and was present when they took her parents and youngest brother. She was taken by the Nazis when she was 16 and survived seven labor camps in the Auschwitz complex. She endured crushing loss, yet lived to 89. His father, Leo, was 18 when he was taken to a series of slave labor camps, where he managed to survive for five years. He lived into his 80s. He gratefully wrote a letter to his first grandchild, asking her and his other grandchildren to never forget. “The Nazis burned the trees but they couldn’t kill the roots.” Leo and Marin enjoyed 60 years of marriage and the arrival of three children and six grandchildren.
“Our community was built by numerous Holocaust survivors and their descendants,” noted Rabbi Ronald Roth, synagogue rabbi emeritus and event chair. “We must recall them and honor their memories.”
A Holocaust Torah procession, with students from The Community Hebrew School of Bergen County, escorted survivor David Libeskind.
Guests included local government officials: Fair Lawn Mayor Gail Rottenstrich, New Jersey Assemblywoman Lisa Swain and Bergen County Commission Tracy Zur.
