(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)June 24, 2019

Mahwah, NJ – As in years past, The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide joined with Temple Beth Haverim Shir Shalom on May 1 to commemorate Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). The service, conducted by Rabbi Ilana Schwartzman and Cantor David Perper, was held in the congregation’s sanctuary with more than 90 community in attendance.

As set by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Remembrance Authority, this year’s theme was “The War Within the War: The Struggle of the Jews to Survive During the Holocaust.” To quote from Yad Vashem’s guiding document:

“During World War II, the Jews in the German-occupied territories had to struggle, both as individuals and collectively, for their very existence and for the survival of their family members and fellow Jews. They risked their lives in frequent acts of solidarity and aid for their persecuted brethren.”  

The commemoration featured the mother and aunt of Temple congregant Jonathan Theodore, Trudy Theodore (nee Chmielewski), born in Bochum, Germany, and her sister, Elise Chmielewski, born in Cologne, Germany. The entranced audience heard their story of survival that began with their father smuggling them out of Germany across the frontier into Holland and then on to Belgium in 1939, and ended with their liberation in Brussels on September 4, 1944. Before the actual outbreak of war in September 1939, the Chmielewski sisters attended a normal primary school in Brussels, learned French and made friends with local children, while also encountering anti-Semitism from some of their Belgian classmates.

Once the Germans invaded, the sisters explained, a new chapter in their ordeal of survival began. In the hope of gaining them as converts to Catholicism, a devoutly-religious teacher of theirs arranged for them to be hidden with other Jewish children in a convent near Brussels. Although refusing to be baptized, Trudy and Elise stayed in the convent until the liberation when they joined their parents who were hidden by non-Jewish Belgians in Brussels. Soon afterwards, the Chmielewski family emigrated to the United States, joining relatives in New York City. A highly skilled tailor by profession, the girls’ father eventually found employment with the now-defunct men’s clothing chain, Robert Hall. Trudy and Elise resumed their education, quickly learning English, finishing school and finding jobs. Throughout their presentation and the lively Q&A that followed, the sisters recounted incidents that were fraught with danger at the time, but in retrospect were quite humorous.

The commemoration concluded with a collective recitation of Mourners Kaddish and Cantor Perper’s chanting of  El Malei Rachamim (God full of compassion), the Jewish prayer for the departed.

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