Holocaust Survivors’ Association

Holds Annual Yizkor Service on Sept. 15

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

WALTHAM – This Sunday, a memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. at Brandeis University’s Statue of Job for those who have no cemetary to visit.

The annual ceremony at the monument, which has been organized by the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston for over 20 years, pays tribute to family members and loved ones who perished in World War II.

This service is an important event for Holocaust survivors and their families,” said AAJHS Boston President Israel (Izzy) Arbeiter, “to come together to remember their lost loved ones. They do not know the dates of death or locations where their families are buried, so they choose this important time of reflection, between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, to gather, reflect and mourn, surrounded by leaders from throughout the community who are there to support them in their grief.”

The AAJHS, formed in 1952, currently has approximately 300 dues-paying members in the Greater Boston area.

Arbeiter will give the welcoming address at the ceremony, which will last approximately one-and-a-quarter hours. Rabbi Allen Lehman, Chaplain and Director of Brandeis Hillel, will lead the invocation, followed by the singing of Anima’amin by the Choir of the South Area Solomon Schecter Day School in Stoughton. A candlelighting ceremony with six candles, one for each million killed in the Holocaust, will then be coordinated by AAJHS Vice President Hannah Lushan. Lighting the candles will be survivor Gershon Boroff and his daughter Lenna Kutner; survivor Esther Wolrich and her daughter Marlene Wolrich Waters; Ethel Salzberg, wife of deceased survivor Louis Salzberg, and her two sons, Mark and Stuart Salzberg; Cheryl Lesman, daughter of survivors Henry and Tania Lesman; Arielle Birnbaum, granddaughter of survivor Jacob, and Myra Birnbaum, and Stefanie and David Kuchinsky, grandchildren of survivor Ben Kuchinsky.

Rabbi Albert S. Axelrad, Ph.DD.D., the Chair of the Center for Spiritual Life at Emerson College, will give an introduction, followed by an address by Brandeis Professor Shulamit Reinharz, who is the founder of the Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Women and the Women’s Studies Research Center.

Marlene Wolrich Waters will deliver English remarks, and

remarks from Stuart Salzberg will follow. Arbeiter will then read the names of the departed members and friends of the AAJHS. The El Malei Rachamim, Prayer for the Dead, will be recited, and Cantor Hyman Laufer of Temple Beth Israel of Waltham will chant the Mourners’ Kaddish.

Stephan Ross, survivor and founder of the New England Holocaust Memorial will, along with the congregation, close the service with the Hymn of the Partisans.

“Our loved ones have no graves,” said Arbeiter. “The ashes of their bodies were burned, thrown in the rivers or dumped in pits. We have no cemetaries for them, so we put this memorial at Brandeis with the cooperation of the University.”

His group actually transported ashes and bones from Auschwitz and Treblinka and buried them underneath the memorial. “After the gassed bodies of victims were burned,” Arbeiter explained, “the ashes and bones were lying in pits adjacent to the crematoriums. We brought these anonymous ashes, which were still there after World War II, back to America.”

On the memorial are inscribed the names of the six death camps among the concentration camps; a plaque on the ground details the ashes, the year they were brought over and the year of the monument.

“This is what we consider to be the cemetery of our loved ones, and so we meet here every year to pray and say Kaddish for our loved ones.”

Arbeiter lost his parents, two of his brothers, and 90 percent of his extended family in Treblinka. While on a death march in South Germany, one day away from its destination, he was liberated on April 25, 1945, his 20^th birthday, by troops from the (post-French Resistance) Free French Army.