Monday, April 03, 2000
Ceremony filled with emotion
Those who died in Holocaust honored
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COLD SPRING — Tearful parishioner Maria Schwartz went beyond Pope John Paul II's recent apology for sins of Roman Catholics over the centuries when she sought out Holocaust survivor Henry Carter.
Embracing him, the member of St. Joseph Catholic Church said she was sorry Sunday for the years the 92-year-old man spent in a concentration camp.
“I said, "I am so sorry that you had to go through that,'” the woman from Alexandria said, weeping. “I felt if I said sorry it would help a little.”
Ms. Schwartz was one of about 150 people of many faiths who attended the sixth annual Yom Ha Shoah ceremony on Sunday put on by the Northern Kentucky Interfaith Commission.
Yom Ha Shoah means, literally, Holocaust memorial day. It falls in the spring every year, according to the Jewish calendar. Yom Ha Shoah ceremonies are celebrated around the world to commemorate the 6 million Jews who died during the Holocaust.
After all the candles were extinguished at the end of the ceremony, Ms. Schwartz held tightly to the aging man as she gave her apology.
Wearing his black and white striped cap from the concentration camp and speaking in a thick accent, he smiled and said he had no more tears.
A survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he saw thousands of people killed and is proud that he survived.
“I always say, "I survived by friends, by doctors and by God,'” he said. “I am grateful every day.”
This year's theme for the ceremony was “Breaking the Silence” and focused on the efforts of brave reporters who risked their lives to expose the Nazi policy of mass murder despite widespread indifference.
A narrator took audience members through the dismantling of Germany's republic under Adolf Hitler, the streams of violence that ensued against Jews and other groups, the boycotting of Jewish businesses and the eventual killings.
Several reporters from local news media read excerpts from editorials in the Enquirer, the Cincinnati Times-Star and the New York Evening Post from the 1930s.
The Northern Kentucky Children's Ensemble Prep Choir sang traditional music and Cantor Sharon Kohn of Isaac Wise Temple in Cincin nati chanted the Kaddish prayer.
“We live in an extraordinary time,” Ms. Kohn said. “The potential for hope and peace is incredible if we can just capitalize on it.”
Ms. Schwartz was so moved by the ceremony that she plans to take her family next year.
Even though she is only one person, her apology made a difference.
“That's just a small word, and it didn't take that much to say, but you have to,” she said. “Right there in front of me is the evidence. It was a real eye-opener.”
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