Oceansiders observe Holocaust Remembrance Day virtually

The Jewish Community Council of Oceanside (JECOCO) held its annual Yom Hashoah commemoration a little differently this year — via Zoom video conference.

About 160 individuals and families appeared in rectangles on the screen to observe Holocaust Remembrance Day separately, but together, on Monday evening. The event usually takes place at the Friedberg JCC in Oceanside.

“Coming together as we have, though unconventional, we maintained our obligation to recall, retell and never forget the 12 million [people who died in the Holocaust],” said Roni Kleinman, executive director of the JCC. “And a big thanks to Sam Seifman, a special man, who made sure a little pandemic didn’t stand in the way of all of us joining together.”

Seifman, president of JECOCO, led the virtual ceremony and introduced each speaker, including Rabbi Jonathan Muskat and Rabbi David Friedman. Youth in the community also participated in the commemoration.

The night’s main speaker was Suzanne Litman, a second generation Holocaust survivor whose parents both narrowly came out of separate concentration camps alive and then met in Sweden.

“We look to actual survivors,” Seifman said, “but now, as time goes on, the second generation is coming into focus. It’s a unique perspective that still needs to be heard and taken into consideration.”

Litman is a member of Young Israel of Oceanside and an active volunteer at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove. A lifelong educator, she has dedicated herself to teaching the lessons of the Shoah, or Holocaust.

At the online gathering, Litman spoke at length about family — her grandparents who perished in the Holocaust, so she never got to enjoy, her parents and their different ways of dealing with trauma, and then, her own children and grandchildren.

“Growing up as a child of survivors was not an easy position to be in,” Litman said. “Although I had really wonderful parents, I was always aware that they were survivors. I lived my life always aiming to be obedient, polite and perfect, for how could I add another burden to my parents’ lives?

“My family was decimated,” she lamented, noting she had no grandparents, aunts or uncles growing up — they had all died, and she spent all holidays and birthdays with only her sister, mother and father.

So when Passover came around this year, and it was just Litman and her husband, this felt familiar to her. However, her children and grandchildren created an album of photos and letters to show their love and appreciation and left it at their home. Litman showed a few examples of letters on the Zoom conference.

“We will miss you this year, but we will see you soon. Love, Sophia,” wrote their 5-year-old granddaughter.

“What a privilege to be parents, and even more so to be grandparents and great grandparents,” Litman reflected. “We, the second gens, didn’t have the opportunity to have fun and express our love to grandparents. I still feel like I was cheated.”

Litman, however, said that she has hope that her family will reunite after the coronavirus subsides, just as her family grew from two Holocaust survivors to a family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I remember two became four and four became a much larger number,” she said. “I have hope, I have faith in God, that when this pandemic ends, we will return to the Seders we have gotten used to, with a lot of family and extended family.

"As my father always said," she continued, "‘May we all be together with no one missing.’”

Seifman ended the virtual gathering with a lighting of the candles and called for a moment of silence to reflect.