Published: May 04, 2008 10:16 pm      

Remembrance speakers: ‘Never forget’

The gruesome images are impossible to forget.

The skeletal bodies and sunken faces with looks of despair forever remind the world of the unspeakable tortures endured by the millions of Holocaust victims.

Six million tortured and killed simply because they were Jewish. Another 5 million killed for their varying beliefs, lifestyles and even handicaps.

Although what happened to those victims in the Nazi concentration camps more than 60 years ago is not a pleasant lesson to learn, it is an important one and was the reason for Temple Beth El’s Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Day of Remembrance Sunday at Mountain State University’s Carter Hall.

“Never forget,” guest speaker Margot Maynard, religious leader of Temple Beth Israel in Sharon, Pa., told the audience.

A former student rabbi at Temple Beth El, Maynard spoke to the audience about the atrocities of the Holocaust, giving a brief history of the events that led up to the horrors that unfolded inside the concentration camps.

Although the Holocaust occurred more than a half century ago, both Maynard and Dr. Joseph Golden spoke of continuing genocide in other European and African nations.

“Never forget” is the 614 commandment in Judaism, and one Maynard said should be applied to remembering both the Holocaust and continuing instances of genocide.

“We each have an ethical responsibility to make tomorrow a world of promise, hope and freedom for everybody,” she said.

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Just as she has since Max Lewin passed away six years ago, 16-year-old Margaux Seigel kept the promise she made to him by telling the story of the Holocaust survivor who made Beckley his home.

Lewin, who lost his parents, wife and three siblings in the Holocaust, donated money to MSU in the 1990s for the construction of the Lewin Bell Tower.

Seigel said Lewin did not speak of his time in concentration camps for 40 years. His most important gift, she said, came when he “unwrapped his bandages” and told his story.

“(Max) dreamed that he was buried alive with his family,” Seigel told those in attendance. “And, in a sense, he was.”

Seigel said Lewin’s greatest fear was that the Holocaust would be forgotten. For that reason, she says she will honor her promise and keep his story alive.

Lewin’s companion Helen Huzoski told Seigel she believed their friend was well aware of the kept promise.

“He knows that you did not forget your promise,” she told the high school sophomore. “He is pleased and he is happy.”

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Twelve-year-old Sidney Rosenberg of Brooks in Summers County said she believed ceremonies like Sunday’s are important, specifically for her generation.

“It tells us what went on in the world and lets us know how we can prevent it in years to come,” she said.

Norris Kantor of Bluefield shared Rosenberg’s sentiments.

“It’s extremely moving and makes you realize how horrible that time really was and that you have to hope you don’t see that kind of thing again,” he said.

Although Maynard showed very somber images taken of Holocaust victims, the picture that stayed with Tom Sopher, president of Temple Beth El, was one of a smiling, pre-Holocaust Anne Frank.

“Until today, I remembered victims and survivors in death camp clothes,” he said. “But those people were just like me and you. They were people before they were victims.”

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