This article appeared in the Aug. 15, 2003 Jewish Advocate.

AAJHS of Boston honors Rick Mann at annual brunch

by Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

BROOKLINE – As Four Guys in Tuxes played American and Jewish instrumentals, survivors and family members, with a spirited camaraderie belying their personal histories, filed into Temple Emeth this past Sunday, Aug. 10, for the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston’s annual brunch.

AAJHS President Israel Arbeiter, welcoming the assembled, called upon New England Holocaust Memorial Founder Stephan Ross’ family and Abraham Weber of Peabody, a former night club singer, to respectively lead the singing of the National Anthem and Hatikvah (Cantor Hyman Laufer of Brookline, Arbeiter noted, who customarily leads the Hatikvah, was ill and unable to attend).

Abraham Rogozinski of Revere led the Hamotzi as the crowd, which filled the basement auditorium, remained standing as City Councillor Mike Ross blessed the wine. “We should all toast to the health and well-being of all the Holocaust survivors gathered here, as well as President Arbeiter and honorary guest Rick Mann and his entire family, many of who are here today,” he added. Mann, President of the Friends of the New England Holocaust Memorial, which maintains the downtown site, was being honored for his work with the survivor community.

As latkes, knishes and other traditional appetizers were served, Weber sang “Litvah Derfel,” “A Village in Lithuania,” a tearful Yiddish lamentation from the Vilna Ghetto. “A mother brought her child late at night to a Gentile area, a place where she thought he would be safe, and she told him to forget that he had a mother and to become a non-Jew,” translated attendee Lillian Cook of Newton. “She told him that G-d would watch over him.”

AAJHS Vice President Hannah Lushan, with a rousing chorus, cheered the Arbeiters’ 57th wedding anniversary as the crowd danced and then sat down to an elegantly-catered meal of boneless chicken, side dishes and strawberry shortcake. Raffle prize winners were announced by Arbeiter’s daughter Fran Rotman and Ross’ daughter Julie, an attorney with the state Attorney General’s office. Following more dancing, Arbeiter updated the crowd on current efforts regarding survivor compensation and future events, before a speech by Mann.

Mann, son of longtime Newton mayor Teddy Mann, is a community activist and attorney who has worked in the healthcare and real estate industries. Among his many distinctions, he served as the statewide Chairman of the Committee to Encourage Charitable Giving, which led a successful 2000 campaign resulting in the adoption of a Massachusetts state income tax charitable deduction.

“It’s so wonderful to sit here with Rifka Stern, who was in Riga-Kaiserwald with me,” said Rogozinski, who was in seven different camps until liberation in May 1, 1945 from the forests of Tirigan, Germany, where he was working on the coal wagons. “I'm honored to be sitting at this table with people I’ve known for 56 years, who I met when I came to this country in 1947,” said Bernard Shuster of Brookline, who was liberated from the forests of Ludz in 1944.

“I feel very, very excited to come together with old friends,” said Rita Stern of Chestnut Hill. At 13, Nazi soldiers, deeming her fit for work, took the rest of her family to Riga-Kaiserwald. Her mother managed to escape and emigrate to Israel, where she died in 1953; the others perished at Riga. Her husband Henry, a former Auschwitz inmate, was the sole survivor of his family, who perished in the Zahlen ghetto in Poland.

“I think that as time goes on, we’ll see more second generation people,” observed Arbeiter’s daugher Harriett Fritz of Stoughton. “They’ll be looking for support groups.”