YORKTOWN, N.Y. —A solemn mood filled the Town Hall board room on Thursday, May 1, for a moving and emotional remembrance of the Holocaust. Speakers shed light on the horrors of what remains one of history’s deadliest mass killings and urged the public to stand against all forms of hate, as violence against Jewish people and antisemitism continue to rise across the country and around the world following the brutal Oct. 7 attack.
“If we forget to fight, we will forget the lessons and move backwards as a society,” Town Supervisor Ed Lachterman said. “We are here tonight to remember the Holocaust and to keep alive the memories so that they are shared with future generations—to look to when fighting against hatred.”
Two years ago, Talia Pierson was at the town’s annual remembrance ceremony. She recalled hearing Aliza Erber share her story, and when she got home that night, she wrote down everything she could remember. “Her story felt sacred.”
A couple of weeks after, Pierson was supposed to meet her cousin, Rifka, a Holocaust survivor. But before they were able to, she died.
“Rifka’s death forced me to come to terms with the heartbreaking reality that the memory of the Holocaust was slipping away,” the Yorktown High School junior, who captured the room’s attention with her words, said. “It was terrifying to think that the stories of the Holocaust could soon become lost and that future generations might be able to deny and distort this period of history.
But I would have never imagined that I would see the same hate and indifference that made the Holocaust a reality in my lifetime ... Oct. 7 surpassed my worst fears. It surpassed many of our worst fears.”
She added she believes that “the type of hate we’re seeing today seems to be perpetuated by people who don’t have a personal understanding of the lessons of the Holocaust.”
Pierson said one way to combat hate and develop deeper understanding is by the sharing of personal stories. This year, Sonja Geismar, a Holocaust survivor, told the story of her voyage on the German ocean liner St. Louis in 1939.
Born in 1935 in a small town in Germany, Geismar was just four years old when she witnessed the terror of Kristallnacht on Nov. 9, 1938. Nazis stormed her home and destroyed property. She recalled the fear she felt as her mother held her, both of them terrified. She said when she saw a torn photograph of her father, she thought he had died. They learned he had been taken earlier that day to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was beaten and humiliated. He was released after five weeks and promised to leave Germany as soon as possible.
Geismar's family fled the country—it was nearly impossible for Jewish people to continue living life in Germany. Her maternal grandparents remained in Europe and were later murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. On May 13, 1939, she boarded the ocean liner St. Louis with hopes of reaching safety in Havana, Cuba, and eventually the United States. Along with her parents, paternal grandparents, and two great-aunts, she was denied entry to Cuba and later to the U.S. After 35 days at sea, the St. Louis returned to Europe. Four countries—Great Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands—agreed to take in the passengers. Her family was assigned to Great Britain and months later, they arrived in New York City in February 1940.
“Hitler was unchecked from 1933 to 1938, and he had a progression of laws and decisions that affected every single Jewish person in the country as well as those who stood by and did nothing out of fear, out of antagonism towards Jews, or not being an upstander,” Geismar, now 90, said.
The event concluded with a candle-lighting ceremony and a memorial prayer led by Rabbi Yehuda Heber of Chabad of Yorktown. Assemblyman Matt Slater, former Town Supervisor Ilan Gilbert, Chief of Police Robert; members of the Town Board; among other town officials were in attendance and participated in the candle lighting.
“As we remember the six million of our brothers and sisters who were brutally murdered, and the millions more who suffered unspeakable horrors during the Holocaust, we stand in their memory, we mourn their loss and we pledge to keep their souls alive, through our actions, our words, and our light,” Heber said. “In a world that feels dark, where hatred, antisemitism, violence and confusion spread rapidly, we must learn from the past more urgently than ever.”
The Holocaust, he said, did not begin with gas chambers. “It began with words, with silence, with good people minding their own business, while evil grew louder and more brazen. It began with darkness being left unchecked...
Today we remember not only how much evil can destroy, but how much good can build.”
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here