Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association members Harry Adler, left, and Ruth Joffe chat at the PHSA's 25th anniversary annual meeting after discovering that they are both from Germany.
Photo by Deborah Sussman Susser
It is unusual to find the words "Holocaust" and "celebration" in the same sentence, but the 25th anniversary annual meeting of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association (PHSA) on Oct. 25 was a celebration, if a bittersweet one.
In the same large room at Beth El Congregation where the PHSA meetings are usually held, the Chai Tones performed klezmer, the guests consumed chicken Kiev catered by Gary Shindler, and 10-year-old Ellie Hoffman played triumphant saxophone along with the band. Recent birthdays were noted, including that of Regina Blank, at table 6, who just turned 100.
The room buzzed with life; the organizers had expected 190 people, said Judy Searle, PHSA's outgoing president, and while there had been some last-minute cancellations, almost all the tables were full.
But as with any gathering of survivors, the occasion was shot through with strands of sadness. Standing at the podium at the front of the room, Searle read the names of members who have died in the past year, adding the traditional, "May their memory be for a blessing."
The PHSA has 218 members, according to Treasurer Edie Wade; around 100 of them are survivors, some of whom are still active enough to visit schools, which is one of the key functions that the PHSA fulfills.
"Our mission," Searle told the assembled guests, "is to ensure memory endures."
After Searle conducted the vote to accept the new board of directors, incoming PHSA President Joan Sitver took the podium. She thanked survivor Carl Ofisher for opening up the world of the survivors' association to her; once when he was ill, she recalled, and could not carry out his duties for the organization alone, he asked for her help. She is serving as president in memory of her father, who was a survivor, she said.
After Sitver spoke, PHSA board member Paul Wieser, a fellow of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and director of the Anti-Defamation League's Braun Holocaust Institute-Glick Center for Holocaust Studies, introduced a group of students from several Valley schools, including Pardes Jewish Day School and Jess Schwartz Jewish Community Day School, as well as from the Phoenix Boys Choir. The boys and girls filed in and took seats at the tables alongside the survivors, then engaged the older people in conversation.
Chris Cusimano, a 16-year-old from Seton Catholic High School in Chandler, sat next to Fred Greenwood, who is nearly 80 and originally from Eindhoven, in Holland. "My immediate family and I were in hiding with 14 families," Greenwood said. His mother and middle brother had managed to purchase false papers, and each lived "like a free person." His older brother disappeared and never came back.
At the next table sat George Stangelberger, an Austrian and the director of the Phoenix Boys Choir. In 2002, he explained, the choir sang "Brundebar," an opera originally composed and performed at Theresienstadt, and "I Never Saw Another Butterfly."
Asked why the choir performs Holocaust pieces, Stangelberger was quiet for a moment. "Because it's important," he answered finally. "It's important to pass on the story." Stangelberger's grandfather was imprisoned by the Nazis for being a member of a student movement, he said, and "the fight against the Nazi regime was always part of what my family stood for."
Once the local students and the survivors had had a chance to introduce themselves, Searle retook the podium to read a letter on behalf of the USHMM congratulating the organization on its 25 years. She described how the PHSA first took shape after some Phoenix residents returned from a meeting of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and then she introduced a video about the PHSA that had been produced for the occasion.
In the video, PHSA member and survivor Harry Adler recalled the organization's first meeting, which took place at the home of Risa Mallin, former director of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. (Adler also talked about being born in Berlin, which prompted German-born PHSA member and survivor Ruth Joffe to call out to him later in the evening, "Harry! Berlin! I'm Paderborn!" - a geographical connection the two acquaintances had not been aware of before that evening.)
Contacted after the event, Mallin wrote in an e-mail that she was "very proud that I was able to facilitate the formation of what eventually became the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association."
"I had just returned from a month-long course at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem," Mallin recalled, "when the CRC (Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix's Community Relations Council) office called to ask if I would talk to Benjamin Meed, who was visiting from (New York City). Ben was starting an association for Holocaust survivors in the United States. Eventually, Ben became the founder of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
"He spoke to the group that evening about the importance of sharing their stories with the community. Until that time they had not been given an opportunity to share their stories. At that meeting we formed a committee of the CRC and began programming in the community. Schools slowly began asking for speakers. The following year we received a large grant from the (Arizona) Humanities Council to do a month of programming for both the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. It was also the beginning of the Yom HaShoah commemoration programs here in Phoenix."
Today the PHSA continues to attract new members (17 this year), who grow younger and farther removed from the Holocaust with each passing year. The youngest guest at the 25th anniversary dinner was Alex Blumenreich, who is almost 2 and who attended the event with his mother and father, Julie and Joshua Blumenreich, and his big sister, Emily, who is "almost 7." Julie is the daughter of new PHSA president Joan Sitver; her grandfather Hans, Joan's father, came over from Germany in 1939, making Julie and her children third- and fourth-generation members of the PHSA.
After dinner, after the presentation of commemorative 25th anniversary pins to the survivors, after the speeches, Alex and his sister danced to the music of the Chai Tones in the inimitable way that only small children can dance.
At a nearby table, Marion Weinzweig, the youngest survivor to belong to the PHSA, was deep in conversation with three students from Seton.
"It's a really good experience," Madyson Jensen, 16, told a reporter about getting to speak with the survivors. "We were honored when we heard about this."
The girls turned back to Weinzweig and resumed their conversation about her life: her childhood spent hidden at a convent, unaware that she was Jewish, while most of her relatives were murdered, and then the long road back to something approaching normalcy. They admitted to Weinzweig that it is hard for them to understand how such terrible things could have happened.
"I'll tell you the truth," Weinzweig told them. "I wake up every day ... looking for answers. It's too big for me."
