Holocaust remembered, tied to modern-day hate

Not knowing specifically when and where several of his relatives perished during the Nazi atrocities of World War II, 16-year-old Josh Gessin said Friday that Holocaust remembrance day offers his family a unique opportunity - a designated time to mourn.

"Having this day helps remind people that tragedies like the Holocaust can and do happen," said Gessin, 16, an 11th-grader at Great Neck North High School, who spoke Friday at a special ceremony marking Yom Hashoah, the annual Jewish day of remembrance.

Gessin was joined at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove by several survivors and their families for the event, which included a traditional candle-lighting ceremony to commemorate the 6 million Jews killed.

Two Holocaust survivors related their harrowing stories of escape from the Nazis.

Eddie Weinstein, 86, escaped the Treblinka death camp after being shot in the chest, living for months hiding out in pigsties, forests, and fish ponds until liberation came via the Soviet Army in July 1944.

Now a grandfather, Weinstein, of Little Neck, said his grandchildren are "my answer to Hitler's final solution."

Annie Bleiberg said she escaped death "by an inch or a minute" as a teenager when she jumped out of a train bound for the Belzec concentration camp. She later was sent to Auschwitz, where she lived for a year and a half.

"We ceased to be people," she said, removing her jacket to reveal the faded tattoo on her left arm imprinted by the Nazis. "We became numbers."

Organizers used the event to bring attention to a modern-day epidemic: cyberbullying.

Holocaust survivor and Tolerance Center founder Boris Chartan, 83, said the bullying showed the same kind of cruelty and intolerance displayed in Nazi Germany.

Phoebe Prince of Massachusetts endured three long months of vicious verbal and electronic attacks at the hands of three classmates before hanging herself in the stairwell of her home on Jan. 14, according to recently released court papers.

"The message to be learned from the Holocaust and from that 15-year-old Phoebe Prince is clear. We can no longer afford to stand by and do nothing," Chartan said.

Carly Haft, 14, whose grandfather survived the Holocaust, said "a new generation of haters" are using advancements in technology to torment young people like never before. Haft, a freshman at Roslyn North High School, called on people to remember Prince and other victims of cyberbullying during Yom Hashoah.

"Just one little tweet can destroy a person's life," she said.