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At Holocaust remembrance ceremony, rabbi says humanity must be “vigilant in face of evil
By Sarah Lehr
YOUNGSTOWN
Sam Kooperman’s parents never spoke about what happened to them during the Holocaust.
Kooperman, a Liberty resident and former executive director of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation, was born after World War II in Germany in a camp for displaced people.
His parents both hailed from the same Polish village, though they didn’t meet until years later at a labor camp in Ukraine. Kooperman’s mother hid a piece of bread under the folds of her dress after her future husband had smuggled it into the camp, Kooperman said.
Relatives of Holocaust survivors shared stories Sunday afternoon during an annual Shoah Memorial Ceremony at the Youngstown Jewish Community Center, 505 Gypsy Lane. “Shoah” is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.
The JCC will sponsor another remembrance event at noon Tuesday at the Mahoning County Courthouse downtown.
During the Holocaust, Nazis and their collaborators killed 6 million Jews.
Howard Honigman of Youngs-town calls his parents’ survival a “miracle.”
In 1953, the couple came to the United States, where they were sponsored by the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.
For years, his family ran Abe’s Market, a small grocery store in the city.
“I was hesitant to talk about everything because it’s so painful,” Honigman said of his parents’ experiences. “But, I wanted to give some hope because they were able to raise a family that became so successful.”
The theme of Sunday’s event was language.
“Words can be used to help people, and words can be used to harm and persecute them,” Rabbi Joseph Schonberger said.
After surviving the Holocaust, Schonberger’s parents lived in Germany, Israel and eventually Canada.
“Our family was a microcosm of the 20th century,” the rabbi said.
Schonberger believes the world is in danger of forgetting the lessons of the Holocaust.
“Evil has never left the world, so we always have to be vigilant,” he said. “Judaism, like in the Bible, defines all of humanity as one extended family. We must think of humanity as one extended family.”