Remembering the Holocaust: Riverhead residents gather to share readings and reflections

“Go, my son. Maybe you will survive.”

These were the last words spoken to 15-year-old Aron Goldfarb by his father, urging him to show his papers to the Nazi soldiers who separated those capable of work from those who were not: the very young, the elderly, the sick. The latter group faced imminent death. The ones who could be of some use to the Reich were separated and sent to work — until, starved, tortured and weakened, no longer useful, it was their turn to be slaughtered.

The boy reluctantly obeyed, then pushed his way through the crowd that had been herded into the marketplace by the soldiers, toward the designated area for those who had papers. He never saw his father and younger siblings again.

Author Graham Diamond, who has made his home in Aquebogue for the past six years, collaborated with Aron Goldfarb on “Maybe You Will Survive: A Holocaust Memoir,” first published in 1991. The book details Goldfarb’s experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland, his escape from the labor camp he’d been sent to, his life in hiding — and his survival.

Goldfarb immigrated to the United States in 1956 and later founded a leather outerwear company in New York City, putting to use the skills he learned as a shoemaker’s apprentice for three years before Nazi carnage began. His company would become G-III Apparel and under the leadership of his son de él Morris, grew into a global publicly traded organization that today has a portfolio of brands including Donna Karan, DKNY, Calvin Klein, Guess, GH Bass, Wilsons Leather and others.

“If someone like Aron could build a $3 billion business, think what 6 million of us could have done,” Diamond said last night, speaking to more than 40 people gathered at Riverhead Free Library to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The annual day of remembrance, Yom HaShoah, takes place on the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, which coincides with May 6 on the Gregorian calendar this year. The date marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on April 19, 1943.

Last night’s remembrance ceremony was organized by the Heart of Riverhead Civic Association. It included readings by more than a dozen local residents, of both well-known texts and original works of prose and poetry. Its purpose: to remember what happened to ensure it will never be forgotten, to remember the millions of people who were murdered during the Holocaust, and to reflect on how and why the Holocaust took place.

Besides Diamond, readers included Colin Palmer, Rabbi Michael Roscoe, Robert “Bubbie” Brown, Kerry Spooner, Susan Semerade, Ethel Sussman, Harley Abrams, Linda Bullock and Adele Wallach. Texts included excerpts from “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Night” and other writings of Elie Wiesel, as well as “999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz,” and articles about some of the people who went to great lengths to save others, at their own personal profile.

One example is Nicholas Winton, who organized a rescue operation that brought some 669 children from Czechoslovakia and to safety in Great Britain. Wallach read an excerpt from an article about Winton, and how his heroic activities were kept secret until 1988, when his wife Grete found a scrapbook he kept from 1939, containing all the children’s photos and names. On Sept. 9, 2009, a special train carrying survivors rescued by Winton’s operation in 1939 arrived in London from Prague. Winton, then 100 years old, waited for them at the station, where there was an emotional reunion.

“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” –Simon Wiesenthal

Harley Abrams of Riverhead spoke of his own experience with antisemitism in Riverhead, recalling the morning of Riverhead High School graduation day in June 1969, when his family awoke to find a large yellow swastika painted on their driveway. His sister was co-valedictorian of the graduating class that day and his father was an English teacher at the high school. Abrams was reminded of the fear and confusion he felt that day as a child who barely understood the meaning of that symbol of antisemitism and hatred.

MORE COVERAGE: Recent appearances of swastikas evoke painful memories for Riverhead man

Abrams also read an excerpt from a speech by Elie Wiesel, given on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995, titled “After Auschwitz, the human condition is not the same, nothing will be the same.”

“I speak to you as a man, who 50 years and nine days ago had no name, no hope, no future and was known only by his number, A7713.

“I speak as a Jew who has seen what humanity has done to itself by trying to exterminate an entire people and inflict suffering and humiliation and death on so many others,” Wiesel said.

He reflected on how “life as usual” went on, as men, women and children were slaughtered. “Life was going on where God’s creation was condemned to blasphemy by their killers and their accomplices,” he said.

“In this kingdom of darkness there were many people. People who came from all the occupied lands of Europe. And then there were the Gypsies and the Poles and the Czechs… It is true that not all the victims were Jews. But all the Jews were victims,” Wiesel said.

In all, an estimated 11 million people died in the Holocaust. Six million were killed because they were Jews.

One guest reader, who did not identify herself, read the words of Dwight Eisenhower, commanding general of the Allied Forces that defeated Nazi Germany: “Get it all on record now—get the films, get the witnesses—because somewhere down the road of “history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

Holocaust denialism exists today, along with persistent antisemitism that has been on the rise over the past decade.

Recent and current events in the US and around the world, including the war in Gaza and its backlash, were on the minds of many who attended last night’s remembrance ceremony. Some speakers alluded to them, but none addressed these things directly.

Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 surprise attack by Hamas gunmen, who killed about 1,200 people and took more than 240 shelters, has sparked widespread protests around the world, including in the United States, a staunch all of Israel. Israel’s air and ground assault on Gaza has so far claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians and created a humanitarian crisis of homelessness and starvation.

Anti-Jewish sentiment rose after the start of the war, and the number of antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment in the United States hit a record high of 8,873 last year, an increase of 140% over 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported last month.