Holocaust Survivors Share Memories With Students

VAN NUYS — Two survivors of Nazi Germany’s brutal effort to exterminate the Jewish people a half-century ago retold their heart-wrenching stories to some 100 Valley College students Wednesday in the first of nearly a dozen Holocaust Remembrance observances scheduled for the next four days.

Erika Jacoby said she started talking about her experiences of death, deprivation and degradation about 35 years ago. “Every year now, I decide I won’t talk about it again, but when the invitations come . . . ,” said the retired Los Angeles social worker.

Her composure later stalled for long moments as she recalled carrying her delirious grandfather under Nazi eyes.

Cesia Rozenthal Kingston of Studio City, who has been active in the Anti-Defamation League, the Martyrs Memorial Museum and other Jewish community groups, told a similar story of escalating horror compounded by not knowing what would happen next.

“My father was such an optimist: He kept saying, ‘Someone is coming,’ ” Kingston said.

Valley College President Tyree Wieder described the forum as a vital educational experience for students--”to hear from individuals who are a part of history.”

The stories of Jacoby and Kingston bore remarkable parallels: Both were about 12 years old when German troops began invading neighboring countries. Jacoby in Hungary and Kingston in Poland were soon crowded with their families into ghettos. They both described gentle fathers who were arrested when they stepped into the street, never to be seen again.

Though in 1944 both were moved via stench-filled railroad cars to factories and to packed, dehumanizing Auschwitz death camps, the two teenagers were able to stay with a strong family member--Jacoby with her mother and Kingston with her older sister, who eventually lost a leg in freezing weather by giving her younger sibling a precious pair of shoes.

The arrival of Soviet troops in 1945 allowed the weakened young women to escape death in the Nazi camps.

Reflecting on the yearly increase in events observing Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah--which falls on Sunday--Valley College instructor Zev Garber said most of the Jewish community forums he has seen tend to draw audiences of people over 50 years old.

But Garber, who has taught Jewish studies at Valley College for 25 years, said he was encouraged by the broadening interest in the Holocaust by Christian groups, the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese and public school systems.

Indeed, the Valley Interfaith Council held its second annual Service of Remembrance on Wednesday night, but focused this year on genocides and massacres suffered by other peoples as well as by Jews.

Rabbi John Sherwood, a coordinator for the Interfaith Council’s service at St. Peter Armenian Church in Van Nuys, said, “The Holocaust is a turning point in Jewish history, and it may be the major genocide of the century--yet it is not the only genocide, and we have an obligation to do what we can to see that no genocide occurs again.” Armenians have long complained that too little attention was paid mass killings by Turks early in the century.

On another point, Garber, a self-admitted curmudgeon in Jewish circles who is also a scholar with published works in Holocaust studies, said he would like to see “more Sinai and less cyanide” in Holocaust Remembrance observances. Rather than emphasizing cyanide--death in the gas chambers--Garber said that more should be said about Sinai, the mountain where the Bible says the Ten Commandments were given, meaning the survival of Judaism in Europe despite the killing of 6 million European Jews.

Indeed, the main Holocaust Remembrance Day organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles for Sinai Temple in West Los Angeles on Sunday will feature novelist Chaim Potok talking about the survival of Jewish art, drama and literature in ghettos and prison camps during the Holocaust.

And even in the traumatic situation faced daily by teenagers Erika and Cesia, the survivors told Valley College students of faith-based hope and extraordinary acts of selflessness.

Cesia Kingston recounted a dying girl who insisted on giving her a prize possession--”the smallest piece of soap you ever saw.”

In the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland, Kingston said that a close girlfriend suddenly vanished but left warm slices of potato for her to find. “I was extremely hungry and put it in my mouth, but I couldn’t swallow--I felt like I would be eating my friend, so I gave them to my family,” she said.

“When the air-raid siren started, I pretended that they were a shofar (the ram’s horn sounded at auspicious moments in the synagogue) blowing,” said Erika Jacoby. “When we got a small slice of bread in camp, I saved some for a double portion on the Sabbath.

“When the old and sick people had no doctors or nurses, we decided we would be the nurses,” she said. “At 15, I had to find some kind of meaning.”

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Yom Hashoah Events

Yom Hashoah will be commemorated today through May 9 at the following Valley and surrounding area churches, temples and synagogues:

* A community healing service will be held at 7:30 tonight at Temple Judea, 5429 Lindley Ave., Tarzana. Information: (818) 758-3800.

* Auschwitz survivor Michael Mark will speak at Sabbath services at 8:15 p.m. Friday at Temple Etz Chaim, 1080 Janss Road, Thousand Oaks. Cantor emeritus Leopold Szneer, also a survivor of the Nazi death camps, will chant the traditional Kel Maleh Rachamin Memorial Prayer. Information: (805) 497-6891.

* Holocaust survivors Dr. Jack Brauns and author Si Frumkin will discuss their experiences at Shabbat services at 8 p.m. Friday at Shomrei Torah Synagogue, 7353 Valley Circle Blvd., West Hills. Information: (818) 346-0811.

* “Voices of the Generations,” a story of one family’s Holocaust experiences, will feature the story of Hanna Kohner presented by her daughter Julie Kohner, at 8 p.m. Saturday at Temple Ramat Zion, 17655 Devonshire St., Northridge. Information: (818) 360-1881.

* Auschwitz survivor Erika Jacoby will discuss her experiences at a special service from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Sunday at Temple Beth Havarim, 5126 Clareton Drive, Suite 104, Agoura Hills. Information: (818) 991-7111.

* More than 50 singers from Reseda’s Kirk o’ the Valley Presbyterian Church, Burbank’s American Lutheran Church, Reseda’s Valley Outreach Synagogue Choir and a 13-piece chamber orchestra will perform Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem” at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the American Lutheran Church, 755 N. Whitnall Highway, Burbank, and again at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Kirk o’ the Valley sanctuary, 19620 Vanowen St., Reseda. Information: (818) 345-2535.

* A program titled “I Went To Auschwitz: A Photographic Report By Rabbi Edward Zerin” will be presented from 10 a.m. to noon Sunday by the Jewish Federation’s Western Region at the Malibu Jewish Center, 3504 Winter Canyon, Malibu. Information: (310) 828-9521.

* Cal State Northridge Hillel will hold a special commemoration titled “Unto Every Person There is a Name,” a ceremony in which the names of Holocaust victims are read, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, at the Sierra Quad on campus, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Information: (818) 886-5101.

* A special musical program titled “The Children of Kovno,” composed by Dr. Jerome Margolis, will be presented at 7:30 p.m. May 9 at Temple Beth Hillel, 12326 Riverside Drive, Valley Village. The service will also mark the introduction of “Remembrance and Reflection,” a book containing first-person accounts by 20 temple members who survived the Holocaust. Information: (818) 763-9148.

--Susan Abram