Teaneck—With somber tones, heartbreak, many tears, but also with joy and hope for redemption, the greater Teaneck community observed Yom Hashoah last Thursday evening at Teaneck High School. The 33rd annual Yom Hashoah Holocaust Commemoration event, organized by the Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck, was attended by approximately 1,200 local residents. Central to the evening was the survivor testimony of Howard and Nancy Kleinberg, who met in Bergen-Belsen and married, years later, in Toronto.
A theme that emerged over the course of the presentation was that the hand of God was present, even during the darkest of times, and that the stories that survivors share have the power to restore faith and help others to understand the urgent need for the world to work together to banish xenophobia and baseless hate.
“Can you imagine how many times you can die, from fear? You are going to the showers and you are walking by the crematorium and you see bodies being loaded into the trolleys and pushed into the ovens, and you see that this is where you are going. I could never come to understand our human nature, how a person doesn’t die, seeing those things, looking at them,” said Mr. Kleinberg.
In a voice tremulous at times with the difficulty of the task, to bear witness once again to the horrors he saw, Kleinberg shared his story of survival as a Polish slave laborer in numerous concentration camps, even contracting typhus at one point. He was skeletal and near death when he was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945, though the survivors could not be moved until the war ended several weeks later.
At that point in the presentation, Kleinberg let a video take over. It was a program segment of the daytime television show “Regis and Kelly,” which told the story of how the Kleinbergs met. A fellow Bergen-Belsen survivor, a woman named Nechama (Nancy) Baum, saw Kleinberg lying on the ground, among corpses. But he was still moving. Not wanting him to share the same fate as so many others (while 14,000 were liberated from Bergen-Belsen, another 14,000 were found in mass graves), she took him in as a member of her group and nursed him as best she could. She hoped that by doing a mitzvah toward a stranger, someone else might do the same for her family members. Her prayers for their survival were always on her mind.
The two were separated when Kleinberg became so sick he felt he would die without a hospital; he forced himself to crawl to the road and get the attention of an army truck when Nancy was out of the building. He was rushed to hospital where he subsequently stayed for six months, and Nancy had no knowledge of what had happened to him.
All of Kleinberg’s family in Europe had perished, but he had siblings in Toronto, so he emigrated there. All of Nancy’s immediate family in Europe also perished, but she had an aunt and several other relatives in America and Israel, so she initially emigrated to Buffalo.
Kleinberg never forgot the kindness of the young girl. When she moved to Toronto several years later, he heard from the survivors community that the girl who saved him had arrived. He was beside himself with the need to thank her. He bought a corsage and went to her house to express his gratitude in person.
The Kleinbergs’ presentation concluded with Nancy sharing that they were married in 1950 and had recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. She said their loving, happy life together has produced four children, 11 grandchildren, and even four great-grandchildren with more on the way. There was not a dry eye in the house as everyone stood and clapped in support of this couple, who had seen so much, and taught so much. They hadn’t only survived; they thrived.
The Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration Committee is co-chaired by Blanche Hampel Silver and Steve Fox, who told the crowd that an agreement to create a permanent Holocaust memorial in Teaneck was in the process of being finalized and asked that the community participate in the design and funding of the project. The Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration is an annual event, sponsored by the Jewish Community Council of Greater Teaneck and chaired by Bruce Prince and Manny Landau. A proclamation in support of Holocaust Remembrance Week was read by Teaneck Councilman Mark Schwartz, which was signed by Mayor Lizette Parker and other members of the Teaneck Town Council, including Schwartz, Jason Castle, Alan Sohn, and Mohammed Hameeduddin, most or all of whom were present. Also present in the audience was New Jersey Sen. Loretta Weinberg and Bergenfield’s mayor, Norman Schmelz.
Schmelz took to his Facebook page to share his impressions of the event. “I was humbled to be able to be there and share in their story but also in the remembrance of others who did not survive,” he said.
A musical portion of the event was presented by Jonathan Rimberg and Stephanie Kurtzman. The program concluded with a candle-lighting ceremony with local survivors, together with their children and grandchildren. The names of Holocaust victims and their local families were also read, in accordance with the program’s annual custom.
The Kleinbergs, as part of their visit to Teaneck, also presented to students, with Nancy presenting the main portion of the family’s narrative, primarily focusing on the need for children to learn to prevent hate and genocide. Some 300 students from Teaneck High School attended that presentation, along with 150 junior high school students. A Syrian Teaneck High School student, a recent arrival in America, was in the audience and had a conversation with his teacher afterward. “I wish the people in Syria would be able to hear a presentation like this,” he said.
By Elizabeth Kratz
