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Holocaust service brings faiths together

By CAROLYN CARY
ccary@TheCitizenNews.com

Fayette’s Congregation B’nai Israel in cooperation with Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church of Peachtree City shared a Holocaust Remembrance Day service this past Sunday for the second year.

Niles Baker, chair of the Holocaust Remembrance Committee, Sandy DeMuth, president of Congregation B’nai Israel, and Pastor Miriam Beecher, Christ Our Shepherd, welcomed the audience.

Cantorial soloist for B’nai Israel, Susan Levine, began with Shema Yis-ra-eil: A-do-nai E-lo-hei-nu, A-do-nai E-chad!, Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One!

The program was in both Hebrew and English so everyone could participate in the service.

The youth and adults of the congregation took part in lighting 11 candles with an inspirational reading accompanying each lighting.

Six of the candles represented the six million Jews killed in World War II and five candles represented the other faiths and nationalities who were also killed in the Holocaust.

A trio played several selections, one of which was written by Gideon Klein. This was the last music he wrote before he was killed just a few months later in Auschwitz. He was only 26 years old.

Playing the violin was Mayu Tsuda, John Peskey played the viola, and Cindy Sulko played the cello.

In the early 1700s, Austrian Emperor Joseph created a community just 40 kilometers from Prague and named it “Terezin” for his mother, Maria Theresa.

In the 1940s it became a concentration camp for 15,000 children. Only 100 of those children survived.

While incarcerated, they wrote poems and drew pictures, many of which still exist. They have been published in a book in “Czechoslavkia” and some of the writings were read by B’nai youth.

The condemned children dreamed of going back home to see the spring flowers, to have white curtains fluttering on their bedroom windows, of having a clean bed, and hot chocolate in the winter, according to the book, entitled “I Never Saw Another Butterfly.”

The service concluded with the ancient blessing: “Y’sa A-do-nai pa-nav-a-le-cha v’ya’same l’echa sha-lom. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”