Remembering the Holocaust: For Camp Survivors, It’s Easy

After last year’s Yom Ha Shoah (Day of the Holocaust) ceremonies at Temple Judea in Laguna Hills, marking the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps at the close of World War II, Gerald Lasensky approached a white-haired man in the crowd and offered to show him the album of photographs he was carrying.

The pictures had been taken in 1983 by members of an Orange County study mission to the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz concentration camp. Lasensky, who is executive director of the Orange County Jewish Federation, often carries them on what he calls his “personal mission” to teach and remind the people he meets of the horrors of the Nazi period.

The white-haired man was Rubin Minsky. He had just lit a candle in memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, of which he was a veteran, and for those who died at Auschwitz, of which he was a survivor.

Minsky, who has been active in promoting Holocaust remembrances, began flipping through the album.

“I saw that he stopped, and stared,” recalled Lasensky. “He said, ‘that’s my sister’s suitcase.’ ”

“I couldn’t describe how he looked,” said Minsky’s wife, Rose, herself a survivor of other death camps. “It was unbelieveable.”

That suitcase, part of a display at Auschwitz, had written on it clearly the name Hanna Minska (the Polish spelling) and his younger sister’s address. Until that moment, the last Rubin Minsky had seen of his sister, she was being loaded onto a truck on on Mila Street in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Although the serial number tattooed on Minsky’s forearm has faded, the memory of that time has not. He lost his parents and all five of his sisters in the camps. His wife, who was in several other camps, lost her parents and many other relatives. For most of the 20 years the couple has lived in Anaheim, Minsky has been active in Holocaust memorials.

Citing recent reports of violent Neo-Nazi and white-supremacist groups in the United States, Minsky said it is important to keep the memory of the horror alive because “it’s happening here.”

“That’s why it’s so important to talk about it,” said Rose Minsky, “to make waves.”

William Weide of Fullerton, who led the 1983 mission to Poland, said one purpose of the tour had been “to emulate the experience of leaving the camps” and then to go on to Israel. Weide, whose father came to America from Poland in 1913, said he felt that the trip had “completed the circle for some of my family who didn’t survive.”

The experience left most of the 25 Orange County residents who visited Poland with him with a “sad and morose feeling,” Weide said, but at the same time, it had given them “a feeling of accomplishment, because we went through the experience.”

Orange County’s Jewish community will observe Yom Ha Shoah tonight at Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach. The program, called “The Musical Soul of the Holocaust,” will feature cantors from four synagogues and the temple’s junior choir singing in Hebrew, Yiddish and English. Projects depicting the Holocaust, done by students in the Saddleback school district, will be on exhibit. Once again, Rubin Minsky will light one of the candles.

One of the largest gatherings for the remembrance is expected at Marywood Center Auditorium in Orange tomorrow night for a service entitled “Catholics and Jews: Remembering Together.” It is sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Orange, the Orange County Board of Rabbis and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Remembrances of the Holocaust in various forms--many emphasizing the aid Christians extended to Jews during World War II--have been taking place throughout the county this month.

Last Sunday at Temple Judea in Laguna Hills, a bronze-and-concrete memorial 30 feet wide and 10 feet high was dedicated by six concentration camp survivors who now live in Leisure World. Candles were lit to symbolize the six million people who died in the camps. The ceremony was attended by Thomas Riley, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, a Methodist minister and a Catholic priest.

Earlier the same day, Temple Bat Yahm presented a drama, “Miracle at Midnight,” about how Denmark’s Jews were saved from Nazi Occupation forces by their friends and neighbors.

Friday in Seal Beach, Leisure World Congregation Sholom services will mark the occasion with an address by Jack Maples, director of the Wallenberg Institute. The institute is named for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat credited with saving 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the concentration camps.

At the services, which are for Leisure World residents of all faiths, will be Oscar Brownell, mayor of Seal Beach, and Leo Stofkooper, congregation president of Leisure World Community Church, who is a Holocaust survivor.

On Sunday, Temple Beth Tikva in Fullerton has scheduled a Holocaust remembrance for young people, and on May 8 the Sisterhood of Temple Beth Sholom in Santa Ana has planned for its annual Community Interfaith Tea presentations by a Holocaust survivor and a Christian who helped save Jewish children during the war.