30 | MAY 26 • 2022 

OUR COMMUNITY

W

DIV-TV Sports 
Director Bernie 
Smilovitz is a go-to 
source for news about Detroit’s 
franchise sports teams and other 
professional sports. A winner 
of six local Emmys and six Best 
Sportscaster Awards, he’s known 
for the humor that informs 
his reporting and in his trade-
mark “Bernie’s Bloopers” and 
“Weekend at Bernie’s” sports 
segments. 
Smilovitz was born in 
Brooklyn and raised in southeast 
Washington, D.C. With 36 years 
under his belt at WDIV
, Bernie 
has become a Metro Detroit 
celebrity. Not many viewers are 
aware of his backstory, how-
ever, as a 2G — the child of 
Holocaust survivors. 
CHAIM (Children of 
Holocaust Survivors Association 
in Michigan) is a caring com-
munity for the second genera-
tion, “concerned with Holocaust 
education and remembrance, 
and combating prejudice and 
bigoty in all of its forms,
” said 
CHAIM founder Dr. Charles 
Silow, the group’s co-president 
with Sandra Silver. 
When Bernie’s family connec-
tion to the Holocaust came to 
her attention, Silver asked him 
to share his mother’s and father’s 
stories. He agreed, then invited 
anchor Devin Scillian, his long-
time friend and colleague, to 
interview him at the CHAIM 
program. 
“
A Conversation with Bernie 
Smilovitz” attracted 95 par-

ticipants on May 12 at the 
Zekelman Holocaust Center 
(HC) in Farmington Hills. 
 
BERNIE’S MOM’S STORY
“For forever, our entire lives, my 
mother never wanted to talk to 
her sons about her Holocaust 
experiences,
” Smilovitz said, 
echoing the experience in other 
2G households. ‘“You don’t 
need to hear’” is what Rita 
(Mermelstein) Smilovitz typical-
ly told Bernie and his younger 
brother, Harvey. 
She and their father, Izidor 
“Izzy” Smilovitz, spoke Yiddish 
in the family’s one-bedroom 
apartment, and the brothers 
themselves became fluent. They 
were always hoping to overhear 
some detail from their tight-
lipped parents about what had 
happened to them during World 
War II.
Everything changed when 
Zach Smilovitz, a son of Bernie 
and his clinical therapist wife, 
Dr. Donna Rockwell (Jake is 
their other son), joined his high 
school’s film club. Just 16 at the 
time, Zach decided his class 
project at Detroit Country Day 
School in Beverly Hills would be 
making a documentary about 
Rita and Izzy. To Bernie’s amaze-
ment, his parents were now 
eager to speak. They “opened 
the vault and told him every-
thing,
” Bernie said. 
Zach’s mature and heart-
felt documentary, A is for 
Auschwitz: A Weekend with My 
Grandparents, is available for 

viewing at the HC, on YouTube 
and in many schools around the 
country.
Bernie’s mother, Rita, was 
born in 1925 in Czechoslovakia. 
She came from a large farm fam-
ily of 11, also supported by her 
father’s general store. Rita was 
15 when her mother died from 
typhus. At close to 18, Rita and 
other family members were put 
on what she called in the film: 
“an animal train to Auschwitz.
” 
Young and healthy, Rita worked 
the next two years in the killing 
center’s crematorium, or as she 
described it: “the place where 
they put bodies in the chimney.
” 
In the documentary, Rita 
shares many of the horrific 
moments she experienced, 
where “every morning, we were 
sleeping on dead people.
” She 
knew the Nazi German officer 
and physician Josef Mengele, 
notorious for performing exper-
iments on Auschwitz prisoners. 
One time while opening packag-
es from a cargo train, she heard 
a baby’s cry. A guard holding a 
rifle to her head then made Rita 
throw the baby into the fiery 
oven. 
“She had to live with that,
” 
Bernie said. Now he understood 
why “there were nights you 
heard her crying.
”

BERNIE’S DAD’S STORY
Bernie’s father, Izzy, was born in 
1915 in Hungary. Izzy’s father 
wanted him to be a rabbi. Izzy’s 
mother died a year after his bar 
mitzvah. When the Nazis invad-

WDIV sportscaster Bernie Smilovitz shares the 
story of his parents who survived the Holocaust.
Bernie’s Mom & Dad

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER

Devin Scillian, 
WDIV anchor

Bernie Smilovitz, 
WDIV-TV sports director

CHAIM co-presidents 
Dr. Charles Silow 
and Sandra Silver

WDIV colleagues and friends 
Devin Scillian and Bernie
Smilovitz before the program

