Several Holocaust survivors will be featured today in a remembrance of the millions who died in the Nazi pogrom of World War II.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published April 18, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Several hundred people from throughout Pinellas County are expected to gather today to remember the 11-million men, women and children who perished at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.
The theme of the ceremony at the Florida Holocaust Museum in downtown St. Petersburg will be "Sustaining the Memory."
Rabbi Michael Torop of Temple Beth-El, who put together the service portion of the program organized by the museum and the Pinellas County Board of Rabbis, specifically sought poetry, readings and reflections that focused on the idea "that it is up to us to remember and ensure that the memory is sustained of the Holocaust."
A highlight of the Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day service to remember the 6-million Jews and 5-million others including Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, the mentally and physically handicapped and homosexuals, will be a candle-lighting ceremony by several Holocaust survivors and their families.
Keynote speaker will be Warren L. Miller, a Washington lawyer who is chairman of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. The commission is the U.S. agency charged with protecting and preserving monuments, historic buildings, cemeteries and other property important to the foreign heritage of Americans.
Amy Epstein, chairman of the board of the Florida Holocaust Museum, is responsible for Miller's visit. She is also a member of the commission that helps to preserve historic European sites such as churches, synagogues and cemeteries.
"We meet about two or three times a year in Washington and at that time we discuss various projects that have been brought to the commission from various countries wanting our help," she said.
"We, as members of the commission, raise funds locally to get these projects done, sometimes with matching funds from the country."
Since her appointment by President Bush in 2002, Mrs. Epstein has taken on two projects and with her husband, Dr. Bruce Epstein, has raised funds for them. The first was creating a large outdoor replica of the Nazis' Mittelbau-Dora Labor Camp in Germany. The second is restoring a hidden synagogue in Terezin, north of Prague, in the Czech Republic.
Mrs. Epstein remembers the first time she saw the secret synagogue in Terezin, a ghetto where Jews were sent.
"My first reaction was this is incredible that people who were fearing for their lives would build a shul (synagogue) and visit it probably daily. And still persevered and defied their captors and knew they were condemned, but still went there every day and uttered their prayers that we still say in synagogue. It was a place to me where seemingly hopeless people dared to have some hope and also it was a place that showed resistance," she said.
"The walls that conjoined up to this synagogue was a bakery and the SS troops went in every single day to buy baked goods and they never discovered this synagogue, so I think they must have prayed very quietly."
The synagogue, about the size of a single-car garage, was designed and painted by a cantor of German descent whose last name was Berlinger. Mrs. Epstein will meet his daughter, Rose Shlomo, later this month in Detroit. Mrs. Shlomo, who remembered her father painting the synagogue, survived the Holocaust because she was among the Jewish children who escaped by kindertransport to London. She never saw her family again, Mrs. Epstein said. There are no known survivors of the synagogue, and it is presumed that the congregation perished at Auschwitz, she added.
For the past eight months, Mrs. Epstein has been raising money for the preservation of the synagogue, which was badly damaged in 2002 when floods swept through Europe.
"The funds needed for this project is $38,000," she said.
"The project actually costs more, close to $60,000. Another $20,000 is coming from an organization in New York."
Today's communitywide event is unique, she said. Generally the museum has held its own Yom HaShoah commemoration, while the county's Jewish congregations have organized joint and individual services.
"This year, it was decided that we would come together as a whole community and that the appropriate place would be at the Holocaust Museum," Mrs. Epstein said.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is an important date on the Jewish calendar, said Rabbi Jacob Luski, president of the Pinellas County Board of Rabbis.
"It deserves a spiritual, not just a historical response," he said.
The tragedy must be remembered not just as a tribute to those who died but "in order to ensure that we create a world of tolerance and acceptance where humanity can never again sink into such depths and particularly for the Jewish people, the act of memorializing is also an act of affirmation to maintain a strong and vibrant Jewish community, so that the attempts to wipe out the Jewish people cannot succeed posthumously."
If you go
Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration, 1:30 this afternoon, Florida Holocaust Museum, 55 Fifth St. S, St. Petersburg. Program will be outdoors under a tent at Central Avenue and Fifth Street S. Free and open to the public.
