Special to the JTA a City Pays Homage to the Six Million Jewish Holocaust Victims

It is difficult to walk down Jersey Street here without admiring the stately brick facade of the 164-year-old Second Presbyterian Church. But what is nearly impossible to ignore is the blue and white Israeli flag visible through glass doors in the church’s vestibule. At night, six candles are lit beneath it, representing the first effort of a church elder to pay quiet homage to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

This past week’s Holocaust commemoration here, perhaps typical of those found in many towns and cities in the U.S. with significant Jewish populations, brought other firsts to this city of 100,000 as well. Elizabeth’s Mayor Tom Dunn proclaimed the week ending last Sunday as Holocaust Commemoration week and the city sponsored its first Holocaust commemoration ceremony.

Elizabeth’s Human Rights Commission, along with the Elmora Hebrew Center, sponsored a Holocaust memorial on Sunday, April 14 in this city 18 miles from Manhattan. The event, held in the Center, drew an audience estimated at 400 people, with as many as 150 of them being non-Jews, according to Rabbi Yale Fishman, who put the program together.

Fishman, also the rabbi of the Center, a “modern Orthodox” synagogue, served as Elizabeth’s liaison with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. He said that a priest and several pastors from the city’s Protestant communities made remarks during the two-hour ceremony.

The program’s main speaker, however, was Fishman’s 60-year-old father, Rabbi Eli Fishman, a survivor of the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps and the assistant chief rabbi in Germany following the war.

AN ECUMENICAL INVOLVEMENT

Fishman called the program, which he was able to publicize with the assistance of posters from the Holocaust Council, the “first ecumenical program that I was involved in. “The 29-year-old rabbi has been the head of the center for two years.

The Holocaust commemoration “has given us a good reason to get together and crystalize our involvement together,” said Fishman, referring to the city’s Christian clergy. He estimates there are about 8,000 to 10,000 Jews in Elizabeth, including 250 families active in his synagogue. He said he and a speaker at the memorial service, Rev. David King, an Episcopalian and head of the Elizabeth Council of Churches, plan to discuss the establishment of an “Ecumenical Council” to further cooperation between the city’s Christian and Jewish houses of worship.

Helene Kalish, the Jewish director of the city funded Human Rights Commission, said the event proved to be important in another respect. She said, “Someone who was present at the ceremony said, ‘I didn’t know there were any Holocaust survivors alive’. “Fishman estimated that 15 survivors were in attendance, with three taking part in the ceremonial candle lighting.

The creator of the Second Presbyterian Church’s display honoring the Holocaust’s victims, Joseph Reilly, said that while he was aware of the Holocaust the idea for the church’s display only came to him as he saw the extensive Holocaust commemoration on the major television networks in the week following Easter. The church’s display supplanted an Easter cross. Reilly, one of nine “ruling” elders of the church, said he was never before aware of a specific date to commemorate the Holocaust. Otherwise, the 39-year-old salesman for The Singer Company said he would have erected a remembrance every year, just as he has done every May 14 for the past 16 years to commemorate the establishment of Israel.

A DRAMATIC DISPLAY

The display is centered on the gold-fringed, approximately five-foot-by-two-and-half foot flag, which hangs vertically, facing the street. Below the flag, on a step leading into the church’s vestibule, is a painting of a bible open to Psalms 23 and 24, which begins “The Lord is my Shephard, I shall not want … ” taken from the Psalms of David. These are often read during Christian burial rites.

Six candles with blue bulbs rest on a blue velvetlike floor covering. The light from the candles reflecting upon the white field of the flag is dramatic, Reilly pointed out. Blue, he said, in addition to being one of the colors of the flag, is “also the color of healing.” The candles, taken from the church’s Christmas stock, were suggested by other commemorations he said he saw depicted on television.

Though the display has garnered no comment from city residents, Reilly said he plans on incorporating it into the church’s regular display rotation. Quoting from the veteran’s memorial in his nearby hometown, he said: “We have a saying in Union (County, N.J.) ‘Lest we forget.”