As the 32nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the death of six million Jews in the Holocaust was commemorated today in a solemn ceremony at Temple Emanu-El, speakers urged that the world not be allowed to forget what happened under the Nazis and warned of the dangers of a new Holocaust against Israel and the Jewish people.
Several thousand people were in the Reform Temple and an overflow crowd of several hundred stood outside in cold and windy weather listening to loudspeakers for the annual ceremony sponsored by the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization (WAGRO). Signs around the building said “Remember” in English, Yiddish and Hebrew. The ceremony in New York was one of many being held by Jewish communities throughout the country.
The most poignant moments in the ceremony came during several candle lighting ceremonies. In the first, 30 women survivors of the Holocaust dressed in black and wearing black shawls lighted candles, Later, after 60 New York City school children came in carrying lighted candles, six concentration camp survivors, one of them a woman born in the Warsaw Ghetto, lit six candles, one for each million dead. Cantor David Kusevitzky sang the El Mole Rachamin. During these occasions many men and women could be seen and heard weeping.
HOLOCAUST COULD HAPPEN AGAIN
Benjamin Meed, president of WAGRO, set the theme for the ceremony which also marked the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps by American and allied troops, when he noted that 30 years ago the world allowed the Holocaust to happen and it is possible that it would happen again.
Ambassador Jacob Barmore, a member of Israel’s United Nations Mission, declared that 30 years after the world had expressed some shame about the murder of Jews, Yasir Arafat, “an assassin of the Jewish people,” was applauded at the United Nations. He said Jews have learned that “no one can fight for us” except ourselves. Barmore, who was born in Warsaw, said the survival of Israel is the only guarantee of Jewish survival.
Elie Wiesel, the novelist whose major theme has been the Holocaust, said the Nazis wanted not only to kill the Jews but to blot out their memory. He said one who does not remember is therefore an accomplice to their murders.
Mayor Abraham Beame also declared. “The Jewish people and the Jewish religion are threatened more and more with extinction in various parts of the world.” But he asserted, “We will always fight tyranny, always defend the freedom and rights, not only of Jews, but of all people.”
Gov. Hugh Carey noted that 30 years ago, as a major in the United States Army, he stood before the gates of Nordhausen and “witnessed the nightmarish horror of the slave labor camps and crematoriums.” He said that despite the three decades that have passed since then “we see and hear war mongering and hate against the State of Israel by her surrounding neighbors.” But he declared the “lesson of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is that heroism can stand up against the passions of hatred and survive.”
Both Beame and Carey issued proclamations declaring today “Warsaw Ghetto Commemoration Day” in New York City and State.
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