Synagogues in Rockville Centre unite for Yom Hashoah

In commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom Hashoah, both synagogues in Rockville Centre — Central Synagogue-Beth Emeth and Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David — held a memorial ceremony for the six million Jews killed during World War II.

“We stand together first and foremost to recall the six million Jewish souls whose lives were extinguished in the Holocaust,” Rabbi David Lerner, of Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David, said. “The Holocaust was not just the failure of humanity, but the collapse of morality under systemic indoctrination, misinformation, lies and propaganda.”

The two synagogues were joined together under one roof on Sunday evening to reflect on one of the darkest chapters in human history and the parallels with current events.

“Let our memorial today rekindle in us the resolve to respond to hatred with education, to respond to darkness with light, and to oppression with liberty. May the memories of the victims of the Holocaust be both a blessing but also a guiding light, a source of empathic thinking and a perpetual call to action,” Lerner said.

In recent years, the Village of Rockville Centre has taken a more proactive approach towards combating hate within the community, after a series of incidents including two marches led by the far-right neo-fascist movement, the Proud Boys, and the spreading of antisemitic literature across communities on the south shore of Long Island by a group that referred to itself as the “Goyim Defense League.”

In response, the village passed legislation to combat antisemitism when it occurs and has continued to work to maintain a zero-tolerance policy against any form of hate speech within the community.

To further promote the importance of Holocaust education, members of Congregation B’nai Sholom formed the “Never Again” committee, which is working with school administrators to donate more than 300 books about the Holocaust, which they pan to place in school libraries throughout the district.

During the Yom Hashoah remembrance ceremony, six individuals — three from each synagogue — were called up to share a few words reflecting on the Holocaust, after which participants were each asked to light one of six Yahrzeit candles, a symbolic gesture representing the six million Jewish lives lost.

Nassau County Legislator Scott Davis, following the sentiment shared by congregants, was invited up to the bimah to share a few words about the Holocaust and his encounter with a survivor named Tovah Friedman, who was liberated by American soldiers at Auschwitz.

“She was one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust,” Davis said. “I could never relate effectively to what her experience was like and what you can take away from it.”

To provide congregants with an idea of what Friedman had endured, he shared a short video presentation of Friedman, in which she shared her story from the camps.

“I was in Auschwitz about eight months, which is a lot by the way, most people didn’t make it,” she said in the video. “I was not supposed to be here, but I was with my mom, and she would tell me everything that was going on.”

In her story, she recalled asking her mother about a certain odor that permeated through the ghettos as Nazi soldiers rounded up Jewish citizens for deportation to the concentration camps, which her mother explained was caused by the burning bodies.

Davis said he didn’t know Friedman before meeting her, but after hearing her speak, sat and talked with her and asked if he could personally bear witness to her story and if she wouldn’t mind showing him her tattoo.

“I didn’t know how she would react,” he said. “But she smiled and she said ‘of course’ and she rolled up her left sleeve and she let me hold her arm and showed me her tattoo.”

Friedman was only six years old when she received it. And even though the number had faded to a point where you could no longer make it out, she never forgot it — A27633.

He said that during their encounter, she shared a message that he wished to relay to the congregants.

“She said evil is like a cancerous cell,” Davis explained. “You have to stop it when you see it before it spreads.”

Rabbi Michael Cohen of Central Synagogue-Beth Emeth shared a few closing remarks, followed by a prayer for the welfare and safe return of Israel’s captured and missing and “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem.