As Survivor Generation Dwindles, Urgency Surrounds Holocaust Memorial

A woman wipes a tear during the candle-lighting ceremony held during the Yom HaShoah observance remembering the liberation of the Nazi death camp. The ceremony was held at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. (Screenshot via WXYZ-TV)

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Hundreds of area Jews and others filled the auditorium of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills Sunday at the annual Yom HaShoah ceremony remembering the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

The ceremony this year – the 70th anniversary of the liberation – was especially poignant as the number of survivors left to tell the story dwindles.

“I’ve done four funerals for survivors in the last three weeks ... just the last three weeks,” Rabbi Aaron Bergman said, The Detroit News reports.

Gary Karp, president of the Holocaust Memorial Center’s board of directors, said it’s important that the survivors’ stories of courage and resilience live on, even when they’re not physically around to bear witness to the atrocities of one of the world’s worst genocides.

“We’re living in an era right now when the number of Holocaust survivors is diminishing within our midst,” said Gary Karp, president of the Holocaust Memorial Center’s board of directors. “We still have a unique opportunity to hear their first-hand accounts of courage, valor and perseverance. Our generation is fortunate enough to be able to hear that first hand. …

“Tomorrow we won’t have as many survivors. ... That’s why it’s critical today to pass on the message ... so that it doesn’t fall simply to the annals of history.”

Though their ranks are thinning, there were many survivors in attendance.

Sal Gringlas, 92, of West Bloomfield recalls seeing mountains of children’s shoes and clothing and a sky red from fire when he arrived at Auschwitz as a 20-year-old.

A retired tailor, Gringlas was wearing a small gold tie clasp with “Do Not Forget” engraved in Hebrew, the Detroit Free Press reported.

“That’s why I am here,” he told the newspaper. “Because we must never forget what happened so that it never happens again.”

The crowd bridged generations. A pair of Rochester Hills freshmen girls told WXYZ-TV they found it shocking that genocide on such a mass scale had occurred less than a century ago. More than 6 million Jews are estimated to have died at the Nazi death camps.

The memorial included a ceremony to light nine candles, each symbolizing loss, hope and courage.

Michael Weiss, 90, was among those lighting the candles. He was 17 when he was taken by the Nazis from his home in Hungary. The Detroit Free Press reports that he was sent first to Auschwitz, then to Buchenwald, and saw thousands of Jews perish.

“We all die,” said Weiss, who lives in Oak Park with his wife, Lilly, 88, also a Holocaust survivor. “But when we die, our families bury us, we have some place to go. To remember them. For these people, there was no such place. So we have this center, and this day, and that’s why this is so important.”