A painful but important Holocaust remembrance

Two weeks before his bar mitzvah, Henry Oster was deported from his German home and, eventually, taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After surviving the Holocaust, he vowed never to return to his native land — but then something changed his mind.

“When people ask me to give one reason why I would go back … I have to show Germany that 70 years after deporting Jews, it still hasn’t worked … show them that despite the best-laid plans of atrocity, 75 years later, I am still around,” he said, addressing a crowd assembled May 1 at Pan Pacific Park as part of the 24th annual Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) Yom HaShoah commemoration.

Every year, LAMOTH holds a community-wide Holocaust Remembrance Day event with survivors, Jewish community leaders and others coming together for speeches, activities and museum tours. According to museum officials, an estimated 1,200 people attended this year’s ceremony, which occurred a few days before Yom HaShoah officially began the night of May 4.

“We gather here to remember the victims and to honor the survivors,” Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Associate Rabbi Sarah Bassin said. “I pray we do the victims’ memory justice, that we deny Hitler a posthumous victory not by existing despite his memory but by living with joy, by infusing the world with a greater sense of justice and by expelling hatred with the overwhelming power of love.”

Appearing onstage beside an Israeli flag and an American flag, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti described the Holocaust as a “lesson for humanity.” He also spotlighted the importance of a partnership between Los Angeles and Israel.

“The friendship between Los Angeles and Israel means no voices will ever be forgotten, and today we can be strong as a people and as two nations,” Garcetti said.

Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles David Siegel, appearing at his final local Yom HaShoah event before his term expires, evoked the talmudic saying that taking away one life is like taking away an entire world.

“Every person who was murdered was an entire universe lost forever. We honor their memories and their legacies, and we learn the stories of those who perished and those who survived because it is these stories that we can teach ourselves and our children,” Siegel said.

Simon Rubinstein, nephew of survivor, businessman and philanthropist Max Webb, told the Journal before the program began that LAMOTH serves as an important counterpoint to the anti-Semitism college students experience on their respective campuses.

“What the kids get on college campuses — you get Holocaust deniers. Here, you have survivors telling true stories,” he said.

“It’s important for the next generation and the generation thereafter to remember. Otherwise, history repeats itself,” he said in an interview before the program.

Among the survivors in attendance was Max Stodel, 93, who was interned at a labor camp in the Netherlands during the war. He displayed the tattoo on his arm as he walked around the lobby of the museum, where 18 Torah scrolls rescued during the Holocaust were on display as part of an exhibition titled “Rescued Czech Torah Scrolls in Our Community,” running through May 9.

Adult children of survivors were also among the day’s many attendees, including Liz Talpalatsky, a member of Congregation Beth Am in San Diego. She attended the event with her husband and son, Ben, who is about to have a bar mitzvah.

“It’s three weeks before his bar mitzvah. I really don’t have the day to do it, but I thought it was important,” Talpalatsky, whose mother, Edith Palkowitz, is from Budapest and survived Auschwitz, said.

Attorney E. Randol Schoenberg, former LAMOTH president and the subject of its exhibition “The Recovery of the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” which focuses on his efforts to help recover artwork stolen by Nazis, said interest in commemorating the Shoah extends beyond the survivor and Jewish community.

“For a while, I think we were too close to it to  realize it belonged in this historical pantheon of events that have to be learned by every human being to be part of the human race and be part of Western civilization, if you want to call it that, and now the Holocaust is like that,” Schoenberg told the Journal. “So, you find the Holocaust is not just something for survivors, it’s not just something for Jews. It’s something that all people want to learn about, want to remember and want to commemorate.”

The official ceremony featured LAMOTH Executive Director Samara Hutman, Memorial Scrolls Trust Chair Jeffrey Ohrenstein and others discussing the importance of commemorating the 6 million Jews who died during the Shoah. Survivor Jack Lewin and Sarah Moskovitz, a psychologist who specializes in child survivors, led a reading of Holocaust-themed Yiddish poetry.

Among the notables who attended were L.A. City Council members Paul Koretz and David Ryu, L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer, L.A. City Controller Ron Galperin, LAMOTH President Beth Kean, and consul generals from the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Hungary and Italy.

“It is painful to remember this dark period in history but we must continue to teach this lesson to our younger generations to ensure they grow up in a humane and just society where prejudice and racist behavior are not tolerated,” Kean said.

Still, the focus was on the survivors themselves. Today, Oster, now 87, lives in Woodland Hills with his wife, Susie. Oster never ended up having that bar mitzvah, but, his wife said, with “everything that has happened to him, he had his bar mitzvah, but in a different way.”