Coffeehouse gives Holocaust survivors support

Maurice Vegh's eyes welled with tears as he recalled the events of 66 years ago - seeing his mother and sister sent off to the gas chambers by the Nazis while he and his father were sent to work camps.

"You don't know how hard it is," the Long Beach resident said yesterday at a Hanukkah season "coffeehouse" event for Holocaust survivors to meet and find support. "No matter how hard you try, it won't go away."

Vegh, 80, was among about 75 people at the event at the Friedberg Jewish Community Center in Oceanside. The survivors ate traditional "latke" potato pancakes, watched the eighth candle on a menorah get lit - and tried to ease the persistent pain of the Holocaust by bonding together.

The event was organized by Selfhelp Community Services, a Manhattan-based organization that assists Holocaust survivors. It estimates there are about 38,000 survivors in the metropolitan area, including about 3,500 in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

The "coffeehouse" setting was designed to re-create the atmosphere of traditional coffeehouses in Europe before World War II. For some, it provided one of the few settings where survivors with similar backgrounds can speak to others about their experiences, said Elihu Kover, vice president of Nazi Victim Services at Selfhelp.

"The coffeehouse gatherings are extremely popular, especially at holiday times," since religious holidays often evoke some of the deepest feelings - and memories - in people, Kover said.

The group first started holding the coffeehouses in 1994 in Brooklyn, and now holds about 100 a year throughout the area.

Yesterday in Oceanside, the attendees also ate traditional Hanukkah jelly doughnuts, sang songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, and listened to traditional prayers. Still, for some it was hard to forget the horrors of the past even momentarily.

"There is nothing to celebrate," said Nathan Sobel, 83, of Long Beach in an interview. "It helps a little bit, but we don't laugh."

Vegh said he and the others don't go into detail about their pasts - they don't have to. All they do is mention the name of the camp, and they know.

"I don't want to tell you the things I saw in the camps," he said to a reporter. "It's too horrible to tell."