By:Justin Smulison
Yom Hashoah, which is Hebrew for Holocaust Remembrance Day, was exceptionally special this year because of the program and the guests it included. The main feature of the service was over an hour of footage from the 1995 Steven Spielberg documentary, "Memories of the Shoah," which was edited to solely feature testimony from seven of the congregation's members who are also Holocaust survivors.
Polish-born Roman Weingarten was one of the seven survivors in attendance, and many in the audience were left to contemplate their own mortality after hearing his haunting tales of life before and during World War II.
Weingarten told of a creeping anti-Semitism in pre-war Poland and, as a young man, enduring first verbal and then physical abuse by non-Jews, including teachers and former friends. Weingarten was eventually shipped to a concentration camp, but he made a harrowing first escape by kicking out the barbed-wire window of the train he was riding with other Jews headed for the camp.
Weingarten said that there is an unspoken understanding among all survivors. "Not only in the temple, but there is great camaraderie among survivors in general," he said. "We have so much in common -- you can open your mouth and they know what the next sentence will be."
The other survivors featured in the film were Norbert Friedman, a former JCCWH member, JCCWH members Kurt Rosendahl, Jacob Spiegel, Simon Unger and Harry Williams, and Malverne Jewish Center members Solomon Goldman.
In addition to the video portion of the service, second- and third-generation survivors memorialized their ancestors. Weingarten's daughter, Bernice Slutzman, said that the kinship doesn't end with people like her father.
"Most of us second-generation survivors do not have extended families," she said. "But when survivors get together, even though you're not related, you become their niece or cousin or nephew. That's how close it gets."
Former Temple President Larry Rosenberg was one of the interviewers on the "Memories of the Shoah" project. As the service's master of ceremonies, he has had an intricate part in Sunday's event.
"There are two parts to each service, one that stays the same is the religious liturgy and ritual we go through, the other is always a different program, sometimes it's more educational, other times it's more spiritual," Rosenberg said. "Each year we are always pleased to see such a great turnout from our congregation."
Another moving part of the service was the musical numbers were performed by Cantor Todd Rosner and the JCCWH choir. Selections were sung from a new book of prayer and songs called the "Megillat Hashoah," which was conceived specially for Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"The Yom Hashoah service is something that is done throughout the world in synagogues since after the war," Rosner said. "The melody and the feeling that goes into can send chills down your spine and even move you to repentance."
Rosenberg said the main goal is to embrace the act of remembrance and education, because "there's no other way to understand how precious life is and not to have this horror ever re-occur."
Weingarten has been an active member in his congregation for more than 20 years but believes that this year's service will be remembered differently. "We do things like this to keep people from forgetting [the Holocaust]," Weingarten said. "Whether it's therapeutic, I think everyone will judge that a different way."
