Packed Beth Sholom marks Yom HaShoah in 5 Towns

Once again, we remember, never to forget.

Members of 24 shuls in the Five Towns-Far Rockaway area came together as one last Wednesday night for the community’s annual Yom HaShoah memorial service for the six million martyrs.

One-thousand hushed participants filled the sanctuary of Congregation Beth Shalom in Lawrence, listening attentively as seventh-grade HAFTR student Jordana Mastour told the story of how her great-grandmother Regina, a girl her age, survived the Holocaust in Poland and determining to rebuild her life as a proud Jew.

Mastour vowed “to tell my children the stories the way that my mother told me, so that when I am not here, my children and grandchildren will be here to tell the story of a little girl named Regina — and by doing so, telling the world, in kind, the truth about the Holocaust.”

The keynote speaker, Rachel “Chelly” Slagter, was introduced by her son Reuben Levine, who said that the Shoah “created life-long concentration camps in the minds of the survivors.”

“G-d gave mankind a collossal potch 70 years ago and we must get together at least once a year to lick those deep and painful wounds” and to work to build a better world, Levine said. “This means everyone — black kippa or no kippa, dark skinned or light skinned, Jew and gentile, whether they eminate from the north, south, east or west. If we don’t seize this opportunity to awaken this realization, then the tragedies of the Shoah become for naught.”

Slagter, who was three years old when she went into hiding with a Protestant family, described her ordeal and a 40 year seach — ultimately successful — in finding and reconnecting with her saviors.

The evening featured a film about Le Chamon, a French village that shielded many Jewish children, and cultimated with the lighting of yehrzeit candles by six survivors — Hanna Liebmann, Max Liebmann, Jack Rybstzajn, Helen Ostreicher, Judith Wohlberg and Jacob Wohlberg.

Nathaniel Rogoff, who co-chaired the event with Dana Frenkel, told The Jewish Sar that "long after we don’t have survivors physically in the room with us, I expect we will have descendants of survivors light in their memory. This is why at this year’s program we thought it was very important to have a fourth generation survivor share her thoughts and her conviction with the community."