Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Temple Remembers Hundreds Pack Service To Mourn Millions Lost, Celebrate Survivors

Survivors of the Holocaust and former soldiers who liberated concentration camps joined Sunday in mourning and celebrating.

Mourning some 6 million Jews and 5 million others who died at the hands of the Nazis. Celebrating the lives some 250,000 survivors have lived in the half-century since the camps were liberated.

“My eyes saw what no human being should see,” said Eva, a survivor who recounted the horrors of three camps before lighting a candle for those who did not survive.

Because of her fear of anti-Semitic reprisals, she asked that her last name not be published.

Gerald Treffry lighted a candle to honor his fellow soldiers who came upon human beings in a living hell.

“Pray that such an atrocity never happens again,” he said.

Both were among the hundreds of Spokane and Coeur d’Alene residents who packed Temple Beth Shalom for a moving service that remembered the Holocaust in prayer and song.

Clergy from a half-dozen Christian denominations joined Rabbi Jacob Izakson in leading the crowd in prayers of remembrance.

American-born children stood with their immigrant grandparents and sang the hymns of Eastern European partisans who fought the Nazis.

Gentiles stood with Jews and joined in the kaddish, or prayer of mourning. They spoke the names of death camps as Izakson prayed in Hebrew.

Hershel Zellman recalled the words of Elie Weisel, a concentration camp survivor, that such a kaddish must be an act of defiance as well as a remembrance.

“Being defamed or forgotten is like dying a second time,” Zellman said.

The service made clear that part of remembrance involves learning the lessons of the Holocaust, and being on guard that it never happen again.

“The German soldiers and officials were educated and intelligent, but racism and hate blinded them,” Eva said.

“We don’t have to be in love with everyone, but we do have to live with everyone.

“We all have one creator, regardless of our religion or color of our skin.”

Izakson warned that the early stirrings of Nazi Germany can be seen in America now, with the rise of hate groups and the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and the federal building in Oklahoma City.

But the reaction of Americans is different, he said.

“The Nazis blew up synagogues, and beat up people in the streets,” he said.

“But here, the country rises as one, stands and says not here, not in the United States.”