Friedberg JCC commemoration pays tribute to Holocaust victims

The Friedberg JCC and the Jewish Community Council of Oceanside will co-host their annual Holocaust commemoration on May 6, bringing community members together to honor the memory of the victims.

The council’s Yom Hashoah event, scheduled for 7 p.m. at the JCC, will invite people from different backgrounds in the Jewish community, as well as those interested in Jewish traditions, to commemorate the Holocaust.

“The broader mission of the council is really, truly, just to sort of keep the Jewish spirit alive within the community overall,” Sam Seifman, the council’s president, said. “We encompass anybody who feels that they are a Jew, is somebody interested in Jewish traditions, and so forth, to come to participate by being an attendee, or come to some of the other events that we have during the year.”

Each year, the event features speakers with compelling personal stories related to the Holocaust. They may include survivors themselves, second-generation survivors, or those with unique connections to the Holocaust.

This year Monte Leeper, a longtime Oceanside resident, will present the story of how his father, Stanley, a Jewish soldier in World War II, went AWOL at the end of the war and saved the lives of two concentration camp inmates.

Leeper — who is also the Herald’s Ask the Architect columnist — will share his unique perspective on the Holocaust. His presentation promises to shed light on the bravery and resilience of Jewish soldiers amid the horrors of war.

“I’ve followed in his footsteps as much as I can,” Leeper, who was 22 when his father died, said. “I wrote about him being my hero when I was in the third grade, and I never thought otherwise, which is why I’m going to do this presentation, because to me he was always a hero.”

During the liberation of the Gunskirchen camp in Austria, Stanley Leeper encountered two emaciated teens, Wolfgang “Sinai” Adler, 16, and Yehuda Bacon, 15, who had been transferred from Auschwitz and were wearing German uniforms. Despite the risk, Leeper took them to a Red Cross hospital in Switzerland. When they initially were refused treatment because the facility was overcrowded, he threatened the hospital administrator at gunpoint to secure their care.

“My father left his unit and drove all night to get them to a hospital,” Leeper recounted. “He knew they were going to die. He left his unit, which was illegal. He could have been court-martialed but drove them to a Red Cross hospital just over the border in Switzerland.”

The boys later emigrated to Israel, where Bacon became an artist for the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and Adler a prominent writer and rabbi.

In addition to Leeper’s presentation, Judy Cooperman’s unique exhibit of photographic art, “Memories and Missing Memories,” will be presented on May 6 at the JCC. It is a tribute to her mother, Relly Roth, a Holocaust survivor, and was inspired by her need to counter today’s rising antisemitism. Cooperman, who lives in Jericho, is an artist and a professor of art at St. John’s University. Her mother was an artist as well.

Her exhibit is a testament to the enduring impact of trauma across generations. Through her artwork, Cooperman seeks to convey the importance of preserving family history, and to ensure that the stories of Holocaust survivors are never forgotten.

“It’s obviously a very personal project, because I’m sharing what I’ve learned and experiences my family has had,” Cooperman said. “Other people, maybe, can take something from it because they see a shared experience, and they can relate to what she’s been through and what we’ve been through.”

Through the power of storytelling, artwork and community engagement, the May 6 commemoration will honor the memory of those who suffered and strive to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never lost to history.

“We should all stand together and build off of our shared experiences,” Cooperman said. “It’s a time when, apart from the increasing antisemitism, the number of Holocaust survivors is going down. I feel like we need to remember their stories, not just survivors. I always knew, growing up, I had no family because of (the Holocaust). It’s about connecting with the community and then trying to deal with my own experiences and family stories.”