The 2010 Shoah Commemoration Events were the same yet different, the same but new. The same can be said of our speaker Dr. Miriam Brysk from Ann Arbor Michigan, professor of Microbiology, artist, speaker on the Holocaust and survivor of the ghetto. Miriam’s presentation was different than those we have had in the past because her survival was not only about the ghetto, but also her family’s survival as a part of the partisans in the area and nation we know as Belarus. She held the attention of 130 people attending the 16th Annual Shoah Commemoration Service at Samuel Lutheran Church in downtown Muskegon Michigan as she unfolded her story and that of her family as they faced the tide of Nazi conquest and terror and selection and Einsatzgruppen death squads – a precursor to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka and more in eastern Poland. She addressed the situation through the eyes of a child who experienced the loss of family, selection, escape and survival in the partisan camps which were anything but family friendly and child friendly. She talked about having her sexual identity shielded out of fear of rape; of being left behind because she was a risk to partisans from the Nazi’s seeking them out.
Miriam’s husband, Henry, while not a speaker and in his words “my story is not anywhere near that of wife’s”, was a pleasure to engage in conversation and to listen to a unique side of the Nazi terror. His family lived in Paris. His father was a union official. When the Nazi’s conquered France and the French government surrendered, his father learned they were targets -not only because they were Jews, but primarily because his father was an active union official and was a person of interest for the communists who were – because the Hitler-Stalin pact – allies. With the help of union officials in the United States they were able to escape the Nazi/Communist hunt. But it was not easy. They made it to Marseilles, only to miss the boat to Casablanca. This, it turned out, was good because those who took that boat were stuck there for the rest of the war or returned to the Vichy government – the collaborationist regime in southern France. Instead they began the long trek through Spain to Portugal continually paying off and bribing officials. He was 12 years old.
On Sunday April 25 an assembly of 130 people gathered at Samuel Lutheran Church in downtown Muskegon to remember the victims of the Shoah, to listen to the voices of the living, those who came through horror of those years in Europe under the Nazis.
With pianist Nancy Gibson and her daughter Katherine Bourdon, flutist, our time together began. Rabbi Alan Alpert called us to gather in silence and then we joined in an act of praise to God. We recalled the silence – the silence before the storm and during the storm which scourged the earth whose primary purpose was the annihilation of the Jews not only in Europe but throughout the world.
The words of Yehuda Bauer on the theme of Resistance were read by area clergy and punctuated by the voices of Elijah Wood a graduating senior from Muskegon High School; Pastor Kenneth Michnay a retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and Jennifer Smith, music director of Samuel Lutheran Church. They sang songs from Ghettos and were accompanied by Nancy Gibson organist of Dr. Martin Luther Church; and Jennifer Smith.
We them lit the memorial candles recalling the murder of six million Jews including 1.5 million children; and then five candles recalling the deliberate murder of 5 million men, women and children because they were considered expendable or a danger to purity – Slavic peoples, Roma and Sinti, Roman Catholic priests and Lutheran clergy, Baptists, Adventists, Jehovah Witnesses, the old and infirm, the mentally and physically challenged, Afro-French and Afro-Germans, homosexuals.
Dr. Henry Greenspan set the time for us and provided a way for us to listen and think concerning the testimony were to receive. Miriam then gave us her story from life before the ghetto, from ghetto to forest with the resistance, to the journey to America and building a new life here.
Monday April 26 from 8:45 till 3:00 pm Miriam and Hank were presenters at a workshop for teams of teachers and students from area high schools who were challenged to listen to Miriam story, challenged to talked about the sources of their images of the Holocaust and then challenged as a team to collaborate on how they could use what they learned back in their schools and communities.
Monday April 26 at First Evangelical Lutheran Church in North Muskegon, 220 people gathered at the first ever commemoration dinner to help raise funds for the Shoah Committee programs. An all vegetarian menu and beverages were prepared by members of the Student Chef Association chapter here in West Michigan as an on going community project. Miriam talked a little about her story but then shared her art work with us and how art helps us learn about the Holocaust and to think differently. Thrivent Financial gave us matching funds of $1000 dollars from the West Michigan chapter.
Please reserve the dates of May 1-2 2011 for the next Shoah Commemoration weekend. May 1st is Yom Hashoah, the official day of Remembrance in Israel.
Please also remember the Holiday Bread Sale and get your orders in early. First Baptist Church of Muskegon gas graciously offered their licensed facility to bake the holiday breads which include: Challah (Jewish Sabbath bread or egg bread), Swedish Rye and Limpa, Stollen (German fruit bread), Cardamom Braid (Swedish Coffee bread), Julekage (Norwegian Christmas bread) and Slovak Kolach (a coffee loaf with either poppyseed or walnut fillings). Look for the order forms here and elsewhere beginning in October.