view from central park: tehilla r. goldberg

Commemorating and never forgetting

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They stood side by side, the liberated and the liberators. The formal, brass-decked young uniformed military men and women from Colorado’s National Guard — from the same 157th infantry that, 70 years ago, were among the liberators of the Dachau concentration camp — and the elderly, tattered yet strong and proud Holocaust survivors. One held an accordion in his hands as part of the Colorado Hebrew Chorale. It was the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, an emotional Holocaust commemoration at the Hebrew Educational Alliance.

“Zachor, ve-lo tishkach; remember, do not forget,” urged Rabbi Bruce Dollin.

Survivors spoke.

Jack Welner: “The ghetto was liquidated and we were put on the trains to Auschwitz. After a while the train stopped and the doors slid open … and it was like the doors to hell had opened … immediately the screams started: ‘Raus!’ Right! Left! That’s when I was ripped from my mother.”

And Leon Tulper, a WW II liberator: “It was April 13 ... Remember, we were all of 18, 19 … we didn’t know how to take what happened. It looked as though we came upon hell. We just sat there crying … GIs literally sick, vomiting … we couldn’t help but cry, it was impossible not to. Then in Morse code I quickly communicated: There is something crazy here, there is no way to explain it. There is a pile of skeleton people here … better send jeeps … better send help.”

Perhaps they stood on opposite sides of the cursed and infamous barbed wire, but the liberated and the liberator — their life stories are forever braided in this crucible of time we call the Holocaust.

Pre-war Yiddish songs sung by the Colorado Hebrew Chorale, conducted by Carol Ward, fill the room with a beautiful melancholy “Vuy Ahin Zol Ich Geyn (Where Shall I Go)?”

Stepping up in front of the chorale, the accordion in his hands, Oscar Sladek, child survivor, shares: “This is a song from my childhood. When persecution started in Slovakia, the government was telling us to leave. We would all have left, but the problem was, where to go. None of the countries would take us in. This song commemorates that.”

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