Spirituality

What You Do Matters

Survivors converge on State Capitol
to remember victims of the Holocaust.

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Abraham Pasternak, survivor, shares his story. Behind him are, from left, Sandor
Slomovits, Gemini; Neal Elyakin, president, Michigan Jewish Conference; appro-
priations chair, Rep. George Cushingberry, Detroit; Sen. Roger Kahn, Saginaw;
Rep. Chuck Moss, Bloomfield Hills; Sen. Liz Brater, Ann Arbor; Sen. Gilda Jacobs,
Huntington Woods; Rep. Ellen Lipton, Huntington Woods; Peter Perlman, West
Bloomfield, Jewish Boy Scouts; Rep. Lisa Brown, West Bloomfield; Rep. Vincent
Gregory, Southfield; Rep. Vicki Barnett, Farmington Hills.

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ever Again: What You Do
Matters" was this year's
theme at the Michigan
Jewish Conference's Holocaust
Commemoration Ceremony held at the
Capitol Rotunda in Lansing.
On April 22, approximately 75 survi-
vors from Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids
and Flint attended the ceremony. Each
survivor was honored during a candle-
lighting vigil and was given a chance to
tell his story.
One survivor, Abraham Pasternak,
told of his horrific experiences in the
German concentration camps and the
awkward beginning of the rest of his
life after surviving the Holocaust. With
irony and humor, he shared how his
faith in human kindness was renewed
by a stranger who spoke a different lan-
guage but offered him a ham sandwich
on his train ride to Detroit.
Many Michigan legislators were in
attendance and took a few minutes to
honor the survivors.
"The Holocaust demonstrates one of
the greatest lessons about individual
responsibility — that each of us has the
choice to act or not to act and that there
are consequences to our decisions," said
State Senator Roger Kahn, R-Saginaw
Township, who led the ceremony.
"The evidence of this 'crime of all
crimes' against humanity demonstrates
that the Holocaust was not inevitable;

it happened because ordinary people
became accomplices to the process of
targeting groups of people and eventu-
ally to mass murder.
"Whether through sheer indifference
or motivated by career advancement,
peer approval or anti-Semitic preju-
dice, in the long span between words
of hate and the machinery of death at
Auschwitz, many had the opportunity
to affect the outcome'
Dr. Kahn continued, "Remembrance
obligates us not only to memorialize
those who were killed, but also to reflect
on what could have been done to save
them. Those who survived tell us that as
many faced their horrific deaths, their
last words were, `Remember us; tell our
story' Survivors promised that they
would, and that never again would the
world stand silent or look the other way:'
Also participating in the ceremony
were Daniel Mulhern, Gov. Jennifer
Granholm's husband; Neal Elyakin, pres-
ident of the Michigan Jewish Conference;
Dr. Charles Slow, director of program for
Holocaust Survivors and Families; and
Rabbi Amy Bigman from Congregation
Shaarey Zedek in East Lansing.
Assisting the survivors were Jewish
Boy Scout Troops 33, 179, 364 and
1032. Singer and songwriter Sandor
Slomovitz led the American and Israeli
national anthems.
In addition to legislators, state
employees and community members,
people on tours of the Capitol took a few
moments to sit in on the ceremony.

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Jackie Dunayevich
Special to the Jewish News

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May 7 • 2009

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