On April 23, the Young Israel of New Rochelle hosted the annual Westchester Community Yom HaShoah memorial program. This year’s program featured testimony of a hidden child, Rabbi Boruch Majerowicz, former headmaster of Westchester Hebrew High School. Keynote speaker Toby Schlussel, born in Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, told her parents’ story.
YINR’s Rabbi Reuven Fink began, “We have gathered here this evening as we have every year. The word for this evening is zachor, which is to remember. We remember the Shoah and all its horrors. We remember the vicious antisemites, the Nazis and all the rest of the Jew-haters. Most of all, we remember the victims of the Holocaust, 6 million Jews who perished, innocent people, who were terrorized, brutalized, tortured, murdered. Their only crime was they were Jewish, holy martyrs who died sanctifying the name of God.”
He continued, “Despite the unique and diabolical campaign to wipe every Jew off the face of the earth, the ultimate goal of the Final Solution, it does not stand alone. There’s not an isolated event that’s a part of the rest of the campaigns in Jewish history to terrorize and murder Jews. The Shoah was a link in that chain of diabolical evil perpetrated against the Jewish people, the Jewish travelogue of death and destruction going back at least 2000 years.”
Rabbi Boruch Majerowicz was born in Lyon, France, in 1942. His parents placed their 2-year-old son in a convent, saving his life. Befriending the local police commissioner, his father received advance notice when the Germans were coming to round up Jews, enabling many Jews’ escape. Unfortunately, his family was discovered by the Germans after a local villager was given a kilo of sugar for information. His parents were deported to Auschwitz. His father was killed the day they arrived, but his mother miraculously survived. After the war, his aunt found him in the convent, reuniting him with his mother and grandparents.
Rabbi Majerowicz described Eichmann’s trial. Every question the prosecution asked, Eichmann answered “as per ordered” with a half-smile on his face. Rabbi Majerowicz recalled the day he was to be hanged, Eichmann expressed, “I am only sorry I did not finish the job.”
During an interview for the “Names, Not Numbers Project,” his student asked, “Why are you religious?” Rabbi Majerowicz responded, “Because Hitler cannot win this war. He destroyed shuls; we fill shuls. He killed a million and a half children; we must have more children and teach Torah to more children.”
Rabbi Majerowicz added, “I was privileged to attend the Siyum HaShas” with his children and grandchildren among 100,000 other Jews, and dreams of attending with his great-grandchildren. He concluded by showing the audience what he called a picture of his past, the yellow star of his parents.
Schlussel began, “I am the eldest child of two Polish Holocaust survivors. My parents endured 5½ years of unimaginable horror. and I was born in Bergen-Belsen after the war, when it became a Displaced Persons camp. My father, Isaac Engel was born and raised in Zwolen, Poland, a small town between Radom and Lublin. When the Germans invaded, their part of the town square was bombed and destroyed. The family relocated to another home and a hidden room.”
In October 1942, on Chol Hamoed Sukkot, a neighbor burst into their sukkah with a warning that they would be taken away. “My grandfather responded, ‘We should not go willingly, we should take a few of them with us.’ Both he and my father were small but very strong men. My father was convinced that he did not go without putting up a fight.”
Schlussel explained that her father worked in a German-run waterworks and was told these workers would be spared during the town’s liquidation. The Germans changed their minds. Toby’s father was able to escape as the workers were marching to the train station. His Polish business contacts hid him. Schlussel’s father ended up at a government-run potato farm called Polichna. From there he was sent to his first major concentration camp, Skarżysko-Kamienna.
“As the allies were coming, the Germans kept retreating,” she said. “My father was taken to Chestechova, then Gross-Rosen and Nordhausen. He described Nordhausen as a hellhole—no food, no work and it was impossible to keep clean. He became so weak that when he sat down, he couldn’t get up. If he got up, he couldn’t sit down. Periodically the Germans asked the Jews for specific skills. Whatever they asked for, he raised his hand. They took him the third time to Dora, where they made V1, V2 missiles that bombed England. Workers in the tunnels got preferential treatment: showers, fresh uniforms and bread.”
Schlussel noted, “As the allies approached, the Nazis were going to take the tunnel workers and bomb it shut. A civilian German physician, who saved many Jews, convinced them to take the Jews with them and could prove useful. They were brought to Bergen-Belsen. The last week of the war, a new group of Jews were brought to Bergen-Belsen,” including her uncle, Yankel Ehrenfried, who joined her father’s barracks.
Schlussel’s mother, Adela Ehrenfried spent most of the war in the Czechoslovakian Shatzlar work camp. Adela returned to Sosnowiec, Poland, after liberation, reuniting with Yankel’s wife and daughter. Alerted that Yankel was alive, they travelled to Bergen-Belsen DP camp, where Schlussel’s parents met and were married. “My parents had no intention of coming to America. They planned to go to Israel, but there was a British blockade to Israel. While waiting, the Joint Distribution Committee organized sign-ups for President Truman’s new displaced-persons visas. A postcard came that his number came up and he might lose his space if he didn’t accept.” Her father thought this was a sign that they should come to America.
Six community members lit memorial candles as brief videos describing each family’s survival played. The program concluded with Kel Maleh for the Kedoshim and Hatikvah, our eternal anthem of hope.
