The last time Bertha Strauss saw her mother, she was given a simple instruction: Take care of your brother. She was 6 years old.
“I remember being smuggled out of the camp in a truck,” Strauss told a hushed audience on Sunday at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove. “And my mother saying to me, ‘Always take care of your brother.’ That was the last time I saw my mother.”
Now 90 and living in Fresh Meadows, Strauss shared her story during the center’s annual Yom HaShoah commemoration, an evening dedicated to remembering Holocaust victims and preserving survivor testimony.
The program, held in partnership with Congregation Tifereth Israel and North Country Reform Temple, brought together survivors, victims’ descendants and community members to reflect on the enduring responsibility of remembrance.
Strauss began by tracing the dismantling of Jewish life in her hometown of Karlsruhe, Germany, following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Jewish professionals were forced out of their jobs, businesses were boycotted and the 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of citizenship and basic rights.
“Women had to put in their middle name, Sarah, and men had to put in their middle name, Israel,” Strauss said, describing how even names were altered to identify and isolate Jewish people.
Strauss’s father was arrested after Kristallnacht, in 1938, and sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Though he was later released, the family’s attempts to flee Germany were repeatedly blocked.
In October 1940, Strauss, her parents and her brother were deported to internment camps in southwestern France. The conditions were harsh: Food was scarce, illnesses went untreated and death was constant.
“It is terrible what we have to suffer here,” she read from a letter written by her parents. “We get 200 grams of bread daily and twice a quarter liter of turnip soup with worms.”
As conditions worsened, Strauss and her brother were separated from their parents and hidden by a Jewish aid organization, moved from place to place to evade Nazi capture. At one point, they were returned to a camp and nearly deported to another, Auschwitz, with their mother.
They were smuggled out before transport.
That moment — and her mother’s final words — stayed with her.
Strauss’s parents were later deported and killed in Auschwitz. She and her brother survived in hiding, eventually reaching Switzerland before emigrating to the United States in 1946.
Her testimony anchored the evening, which organizers said reflected the core of the center’s mission: ensuring that survivors’ stories continue to be heard.
“So what we do here is so heavy at times, and it can’t be done alone,” Bali Lerner, the center’s executive director, said. “It literally takes a village, and it starts with our survivors, who come here and give all of themselves and pour their heart out.”
Alan Mindel, chair of the center’s board of directors, offered both historical and present-day context for the Holocaust, pointing to the global response during World War II and the importance of confronting modern antisemitism.
“We, the descendants of Holocaust survivors, who have sworn the oath to never forget this unimaginable tragedy, know a simple truth,” Mindel said. “‘Never again’ can only be achieved if we have the same rights as any other people. It is as much about the present as it is about the past. But it is the lessons of the past that we must remember to protect our future.”
Educators at the center emphasized the importance of testimony in shaping understanding for younger generations.
“This is not just a history textbook lesson,” Donna Rosenblum, the center’s director of education, said. “It is the best education that we can give them.”
The center, Rosenblum said, remains committed to documenting survivors’ stories and ensuring that they are accessible for years to come.
Zachary Graulich, the assistant director of education, acknowledged the emotional weight of sharing such experiences, but said that survivors continue to do so out of a sense of duty.
“For any survivor, sharing testimony . . . is an extremely challenging thing to do,” Graulich said. “But . . . it’s an obligation. It’s not a choice.”
Rabbi Irwin Huberman, of Congregation Tifereth Israel, connected the lessons of the Holocaust to current global events, urging vigilance in the face of hatred and injustice.
“The lessons that we learn from the Holocaust is not just never again for the Jewish people,” Huberman said. “We have to stand on guard for whenever there is hatred and whenever there is injustice.”
Throughout the evening, a consistent message emerged: remembrance is not passive. It requires listening, learning and action.
And as Strauss’s story made clear, it is a responsibility that extends beyond those who lived through it, carried forward by those willing to bear witness.
