(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)November 10, 2009

MAHWAH – This year’s joint Kristallnacht commemoration of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Beth Haverim Shir Shalom, held in the congregation’s sanctuary on November 10, featured a talk by Dr. Leah Wolfson of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. An Applied Research Scholar at the Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, she spoke on “Writing for Our Lives: A Jewish Response to the Holocaust.”

Her presentation stressed not only the variety and extent of the literary expression but their moving nature, often having been written by men, women and children often facing starvation, disease and imminent death. The writings ranged from the lyrical poetry of Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sachs composed in Swedish exile to the miniature volume of furtive romantic verse written by an unknown teenage boy in a soon-to-be eliminated East European ghetto. Many of the texts highlighted by Wolfson, of which she often also showed photographs, poignantly document critical moments in the Holocaust from the voyage of the ill-fated voyage of the passenger vessel St. Louis to the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto. For reasons that should not be too difficult to understand through the presentation her audience, composed of members of the congregation, Ramapo College students and community members, sat spellbound throughout the prsentation.

Rabbi Joel Mosbacher and Cantor David Perper conducted a meaningful and moving Service of Remembrance that integrated Dr. Wolfson’s talk perfectly. The Center will again join Beth Haverim Shir Shalom for the observance of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) that in 2010 falls on April 11.

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