Castel Royale residents commemorate HolocaustApril 25, 2012
Joel
Goldenberg, The Suburban
The annual Yom Hashoah commemoration of the
Holocaust at Côte St. Luc's Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem Synagogue is the most
widely known community remembrance of the atrocities of the Nazis. But several
other events were held last week to also remember the six million Jews who
perished during World War II. One such ceremony was held at the Castel Royale
residence in Côte St. Luc, where a smaller version of the community
commemoration was held. Residents lit candles in memory of those who died, and
also to represent the partisans who fought Nazis, veterans, the Polish army, the
Russian army, the Israeli army and Castel Royale itself. Rabbi Mark Friedman, of
the Castel Royale, offered words of inspiration. Eva Bass, a Holocaust survivor,
said it would be impossible to explain everything she experienced during that
time in Hungary. “I don't wish what we went through on anybody in the world.”
Castel Royale director Sonya Miles told of a trip to Europe she took as a
teenager. While there, she visited the house of Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who
wrote her famous diary as her family was being hidden from the Nazis in
Amsterdam. “This really meant a lot to me,” Miles said. “I remember the day like
it was yesterday. When I went back to Europe two years later, I went to Poland
and I wanted to go to Cracow, and I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau. When I
crossed the gate, I felt very emotional.” Councillor Mitchell Brownstein said
his father-in-law, Eddy Yagodzinsky, survived the Warsaw Ghetto through various
harrowing means, including hiding in a barn, dressing as a Christian, living
under a Polish man's identity and hiding in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto after
the uprising, where he was found and saved by a man named David Landau.
Yagodzinsky is now 92. “The blood that goes through my children is thanks to his
survival,” Brownstein pointed out.
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