The link between the Holocaust and the emergence of the State of Israel was stressed today as some 5500 people gathered inside Temple Emanu-EI and outside on Fifth Avenue to commemorate the 36th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and moum the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.
The annual event, sponsored by the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization (WA GRO) in conjunction with other Jewish organizations, featured Jewish leaders and public officials under an emblem that declared “Remember” in Hebrew, Yiddish and English.
The program, held for the eighth consecutive year at the massive Manhattan Reform temple, was under the auspices this year of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. The ceremony here, and in other Jewish communities throughout the United States, marked a week-long remembrance of the Holocaust which will include President Carter’s participation in a ceremony at the Rotunda of the Capital Tuesday and a service at the National Cathedral in Washington next Sunday. In Israel, Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) will start tomorrow night.
Many of the 2500 persons in the main sanctuary of the temple wept when 25 women survivors lit candles as the Temple Emanu-EI Chair sang “Ani Maamin,” when children from the Romaz School in Manhattan and the Solomon Schechter schools on Long Island walked up the aisle with yarzheit candles, when six survivors accompanied by six children of survivors lit one candle each in memory of the six million dead or when Metropolitan Opera tenor Misha Raitzin sang EI Mole Rachamim and songs of the ghetto fighters.
LINK BETWEEN HOLOCAUST, ISRAEL
Many of the speakers pointed to the link between the Holocaust and Israel. Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N., who celebrated his bar mitzvah in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, said that the “rebirth of the State of Israel” is important not only because it is the realization of Jewish nationality but also because it includes a “vow” that “Jewish blood will no longer be spilled with impunity” and that Jews will no longer be homeless or defenseless. Blum said that as the Passover Haggadah reminds Jews in every generation to consider themselves as having been freed from Egypt all Jews must consider themselves from now on as having survived the Holocaust.
Theodore Mann, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, declared that the Holocaust has taught Jews that they must defend Israel and that they must make sure “we will endure here and in Israel.”
Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D.NY), said that the “ultimate triumph” of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters was the creation of the State of Israel. He said the ghetto fighters taught future generations that there “is no alternative to strength and determination for those who wish to preserve their freedom.”
CONCERN IS INCREASING
These remarks were echoed by Benjamin Meed, president of WAGRO and chairman of the event today. “If Israel is strong today, and if Israel was able to persuade its former principal enemy to make peace, “Meed declared, “this physical and moral power — reaches back to 1943 to the Warsaw Ghetto. Uprising. It was there within the ghetto walls, in 1943 that all the Jews demonstrated their determination to stand up, to fight and to die for their rights as people.”
Meed, who is also chairman of the Advisory Board of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, said that it appears that as time goes by concern for what happened in the Holocaust increases. “As the years pass, the picture becomes clearer,” he said, ” not only to us who were there, but to people who never were there, to American born Jews, to the new generation, to our own children, and yes, perhaps in some ways to the rest of the world.”
Meed also expressed concern that the Holocaust must continue to be remembered, so that it will not happen again, after the survivors are no longer alive. This concern was shared by Edward Sanders, President Carter’s advisor on Jewish affairs, who represented the President at the ceremony.
Sanders said the ceremony here, the largest in the nation, is a fitting memorial to the martyrs who died in the Holocaust. But he also said that the memory must continue once the survivors are gone. He said this is why the President’s Commission is trying to find the most fitting memorial for the Holocaust. Gov. Hugh Carey of New York and New York City Mayor Edward Koch joined Meed in proposing that a memorial to the Holocaust be placed in New York City. Carey and Koch issued proclamations declaring today “Warsa Ghetto Day ” in the state and city.
The program ended with the audience joining Meed in supporting a resolution protesting the freeing of four persons in Germany last week charged with criminal activities at the Maidanek concentration camp on grounds that positive identification was lacking. The resolution demanded this practice not be used again by German courts.
Among the many other ceremonies held throughout the country today was the community wide observance in Philadelphia at the newly refurbished Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs. The area around the monument has been improved and the monument itself has a new base with an iscription which says in part that the six million Jewish martyrs’ “suffering and heroism are forever branded upon our conscience and shall be remembered from generation to generation.”
This year’s program in Philadelphia was based on the theme, “Children of the Holocaust: The Lost Generation Remembered” in recognition of 1979 as the international Year of the Child. Before the ceremony, children from throughout the Philadelphia area joined representatives of numerous synagogues and organizations in placing wreaths at the base of the monument. During the ceremony itself, five candles were lit by representatives of Jewish organizations and a sixth by a Holocaust survivor’s child, in memory of the one and-a-half million children who died in the Holocaust. The annual program is sponsored by a Memorial Committee.
Jewish communities also have scheduled events throughout the week. In Chicago, a memorial service will be held at noon Tuesday at Spertus College sponsored by the Public Affairs Committee of the Jewish United Fund and the Chicago Board of Rabbis and Spertus College. Also scheduled is a program at City Park led by city officials. Many municipalities and state legislatures throughout the country also have programs. The Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York is providing schools with special materials for use on the observance of Yom Hashoah on Tuesday.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
