Ridgewood religious groups host Holocaust memorial service
MAY 1, 2014 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2014, 4:27 PM
BY BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
One woman wrote poetry about each painful experience during the Holocaust, such as having her head shaved.
A man stole cloth to wear Jewish ritual fringes beneath his camp uniform.
Some Jewish prisoners risked their lives just to assemble the necessary materials to make gifts for friends.
Holocaust historian Bonnie Gurewitsch explained all these stories as the keynote speaker for last Sunday night’s Ridgewood Interfaith Holocaust Memorial Service at Temple Israel.
Even as the Holocaust is so often, understandably, associated purely with extreme cruelty and suffering, one of Gurewitsch’s longtime missions has been to educate people about the existence of a strong, moving element of Jewish resistance to that cruelty and suffering – not just physical resistance, but spiritual resistance.
“They tried to make their lives bearable and meaningful,” she said on Sunday. “Jews defied dehumanization with weapons of the spirit.”
This little-discussed aspect of the Holocaust was the subject of Gurewitsch’s Temple Israel speech, “Sanctifying Life and God’s Name: Resistance and the Spirit,” which drew from her work as a curator and archivist, before her recent retirement, on a 2007-2008 exhibit for New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. Titled “Daring to Resist: Jewish Defiance in the Holocaust,” the exhibit was honored in the 2008 Excellence in Exhibitions competition of the American Association of Museums.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/community-news/ridgewood-religious-groups-host-holocaust-memorial-service-1.1007163#sthash.EYeqURWQ.dpuf
