This article appeared in the Oct. 21, 2005 Jewish Advocate.

Yizkor service looks to the future

BY SUSIE DAVIDSON

“How could people go through such a thing and still continue to have a positive outlook on people and life?” asked Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, who chairs the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston’s Holocaust Commemoration Committee, at the start of Sunday’s Yizkor service at Brandeis’ Berlin Chapel.

“I believe it is because they came from homes that were rich with life, that were warm and connected,” he continued. “Those early years, which psychologists tell us are so important, helped them to go on.”

The event, sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Brandeis Hillel and the JCRC of Greater Boston, is held each year during the High Holidays so that survivors of the Nazi regime, who have no graves to visit, can recall their loved ones.

As AAJHS President Izzy Arbeiter and Vice President Hannah Lushan greeted and seated attendees, Waldoks sounded an upbeat note. “This is not the story of destruction, but of how the survivors rebuilt their lives,” he said, before introducing Brandeis Chaplain and Hillel Director Rabbi Allen Lehmann.

Lehmann emphasized the connections to the past and the future as he invited Manginah, the Brandeis University Acapella Group, to the bima, where they sang an Israeli song about remembrance while Lushan coordinated an adjacent candle lighting in memory of the six million. Harvey and Sarah Lewin, Joseph and Ruth Wasserstein and Etta Averbach; Harriet Fritz and Yvonne Illich of Generations After, a group for descendants of survivors; and Elizabeth Wluka represented three generations.

Following remarks by Rabbi Albert S. Axelrad, who chairs the Center for Spiritual Life at Emerson College, a poem by Vilna ghetto poet Abraham Sutzkever was chanted by Brandeis Professor of Yiddish Language and Literature Ellen Kellman and two of her students, Chana Lehman and J.J. Schmuckler.

Isaac Kott, Vice President of Generations After, recalled his father’s experiences as a survivor and how they affected his family.

Waldoks sang the El Malei Rachaamim and led the Mourner’s Kaddish; New England Holocaust Memorial founder Steve Ross closed the event with a recitation of the Hymn of the Partisans, sung in unison by the audience.

Before these closing prayers, Arbeiter had read the names of those lost to the community over the past year. “Each year,” he said, “the list is getting longer, and the audience is getting smaller.”

His voice broke as he told the crowd that on his way in, he had glanced at the Statue of Job, Brandeis’ Holocaust Monument that stands outside the chapel in the Three Chapels area, where Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant places of worship frame a heart-shaped pool. The bronze work, by sculptor Nathan Rappaport, was fashioned after his original, which is located at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

“I heard the voices coming out of it,” Arbeiter said to them. “They called out, ‘do not forget us’.

“We must be here every year,” he declared, as tears welled in the room. “We must answer to those voices: we are here, and we will never forget you.”