Observance Recalls Holocaust Horrors : Commemoration: More than 500 people gather to honor the victims and celebrate the survivors.

A half-century later, Frances Gelbart told the audience Sunday, she still remembers.

She remembers the freedom she lost as a young girl at the hands of the Nazis. The armband she was forced to wear, with the Star of David that branded her a Jew. Her identification number tattoo, which she tried in vain to wipe off her left arm.

Above all, the Fullerton businesswoman said, she remembers the terror of her imprisonment in Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp run by the Nazis during World War II.

It was a day of remembrance Sunday at Temple Beth Sholomin Santa Ana, as more than 500 people from throughout Orange County gathered for an annual observance of the Holocaust. With music, poetry, drama and prayer, they paid tribute to the six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis and celebrated the lives of those who survived it.

“It was very moving for me and very emotional, but it had to be said,” remarked Michele Halpern Szekel of Irvine, who recounted her mother’s remarkable escape from a train bound for a death camp run by the Nazis at Treblinka.

This year’s commemoration, co-sponsored by 10 Jewish groups from throughout Orange County, carried added poignancy because it marked the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, said Osi Sladek, executive director of the Rosen Holocaust Center in Tustin.

The Nazis established the “ghetto” in Poland’s capital in 1940, enclosing 500,000 people inside 10-foot-high walls.

The population was decimated, and the Nazis planned to honor Hitler’s birthday on April 20, 1943 by transporting the remaining 60,000 Jews to Treblinka for extermination. But several hundred Jewish fighters--young, hungry, and ill-equipped--refused to succumb and revolted, holding off the Germans for nearly a month.

The legendary uprising, said Sladek, offers “a real bright spot” from that period, allowing young Jews today to identify with the youthful rebels of the Holocaust.

“We always hear, ‘How come you didn’t fight back? How come you let them take you like sheep?’ ” said Sladek, who survived the war by hiding out with his parents in the snow-covered mountains of Slovakia. The uprising “shows there were Jews who rose up and decided to fight back. That makes this a special year for us.”

At Sunday’s observance, seven young people demonstrated some of the moral dilemmas facing the Jews of Warsaw as they staged excerpts from a play called “The Survivor.”

But Matt Mindell, 23, of Los Angeles, said Jews must do more than merely attend a memorial once a year if they hope to escape the “historical amnesia” that he thinks fueled the Holocaust.

“We (Jews) think we’re so safe and free in this country,” Mindell said. “We forget what it is to be a Jew. We can walk around and say ‘Remember (the Holocaust), remember,’ but we’ve got to learn how to be Jews again. It’s more than just eating bagels.”

The Warsaw re-enactment and musical performances, poetry and dramatic readings--including one by Holocaust survivor and former “Hogan’s Heroes” co-star Robert Clary--all drew enthusiastic applause from the audience at the synagogue.

But for some, the memories were too painful.

One elderly woman peered at photo enlargements from the Holocaust that were on display in the temple lobby, showing strangers a picture of her own mother in Warsaw. But she wept and covered her ears as she heard people applauding loudly inside.

“Please, no clapping, no clapping!” she cried out to herself. “Don’t they know what this was? This is not a concert or a Broadway show! Please, God. Please, God.”