Families gather atop Mount Sinai to recall the horrors of the Holocaust
By Angela Randazzo Special to the Acorn

'IN THE TELLING WE HAVE STRENGTH'- Lucy Ableser grieves for her parents, who died in the Holocaust, during the conclusion of the Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony at Mount Sinai Memorial Park on Sunday. Her husband Marty comforts her in the Grove of the Righteous Rescuers. Ableser was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Right, a yellow ribbon, symbol of the Holocaust, and pebbles from Jerusalem sit upon a plaque in the grove.

On a blue-skied Sunday, more than 200 people gathered in the Mount Sinai Memorial Parks and Mortuaries chapel in Simi Valley to pay tribute to 11 million people- 6 million of whom were Jews- exterminated by the Nazi war machine nearly 70 years ago.

"It's in the telling we have strength," said Martha W. White, a spokesperson for Mount Sinai, sponsor of the event. "The telling not only to ourselves, but to our children and the whole world."

The list of speakers at the second annual Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) observance on April 15 included Holocaust survivors and a soldier whose platoon helped liberate a concentration camp.

Photos by IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers

State Sen. Tom McClintock (RThousand Oaks), Assemblywoman Audra Strickland (RWestlake Village) and representatives of the German, Polish and Armenian embassies in Los Angeles were at the ceremony. Simi Valley Councilmember Michelle Foster attended the event with family, as did many other area residents.

"I've come today to show my respect to my mother-in-law, who was a survivor," said Cindy Shilkoff, a Simi Valley resident, "and to make sure my son knows the stories so he can pass them on to other generations."

Shilkoff attended the event with her 13-year-old son, Jordan.

The ceremony opened with a musical tribute sung by the Beit T'Shuvah Choir from Los Angeles; a greeting by Leonard Lawrence, Mount Sinai general manager; and a prayer lead by Rabbi Michele Paskow from Congregation B'nai Emet of Simi Valley.

Eyewitness accounts from survivors like Daisy Miller were at the heart of the event.

"I was born in 1938, the wrong time for a Jewish child to be born in Europe," Miller said. "For the most part, those of us who survived as children survived in hiding- in basements, in small closets and sometimes literally underground."

IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT- Holocaust survivor Daisy Miller speaks to community members gathered at Mount Sinai Memorial Park on Sunday for a Yom HaShoah ceremony remembering the Holocaust.

Miller was born in Yugoslavia, which was invaded by the Nazi army in 1941. She escaped with her family to Italy with false documents.

But Italy was not a safe haven, and, to avoid imprisonment, the family was forced to go on the run. They found a hiding place on a rustic farm. The farm family hid them in a closed room with few amenities. As young as she was, Miller knew her family was in danger.

"Even as a 5-year-old child I knew I couldn't make noise or go outside," she said. "I knew I had to be a very good girl or I would lose my family."

After enduring years of hardship, their ordeal ended when allied forces liberated the country. In 1951, Miller's family sailed for America along with other refugees.

"As we came into the harbor everyone was on the deck. Someone said, 'I see a light.' Slowly more lights came into view and then the Statue of Liberty. The joy was beyond belief," Miller recalled eloquently. "Then everyone became silent, remembering where we came from and all those who were lost."

Miller is now director of development for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. She is also co-founder of the Child Survivors of the Holocaust of Los Angeles.

Simi resident Bent Lerno, 80, a retired engineer, told of his experiences when the Germans invaded his native Denmark. In 1943, when Lerno was only a teen, his family got a frantic telephone call to leave immediately or risk deportation to German labor camps.

Lerno told the story of how he and his brother escaped through the woods on bicycles. The Nazis arrested his mother as she attempted to flee by bus. They forced her into slave labor at Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

Soon after he escaped to Sweden, Lerno joined the Nazi Resistance as part of Free Danish army that routed the Germans out of Denmark. He emigrated to the United States in 1950. His mother survived her ordeal and returned to Denmark, where the family was reunited.

"Luckily she survived and came back," Lerno said. "She lived a precious long life until she was 86 years old."

In 1941, speaker Mickey Furstenberg's photography career was interrupted when he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

Furstenberg landed in Normandy, surviving the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for Bravery.

In 1945, Furstenberg and his platoon helped liberate a labor camp near Frankfurt. When they opened a warehouse to use for storage, the soldiers found a starvation camp. The memory of the horror he saw in that camp still haunts the 88-year-old Winnetka resident.

"Some of them were so starved they couldn't take water. We tried to help them and then the medics came," Furstenberg said. "I still remember that day. The survivors were like my family."