COLUMBIA, Md. — The Howard County Holocaust Remembrance Committee is searching for family artifacts to display next month during its annual Yom Hashoah service.
Among the belongings to be displayed are a prison jacket from Mauthausen, an Austrian concentration camp known for its “death stairs”, photos of relatives who did not survive the war and a booklet of Jewish songs provided by the Armed forces.
The committee is hosting its service on April 13, the Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the Oakland Mills Interfaith Center. If you have artifacts you would like to exhibit temporarily or names of family to memorialize you can email
remembrance@jewishhoco.org.
Holocaust stories of loss, survival and even miracles live on through family artifacts
For children of holocaust survivors like Sara Moses Baum, it’s more than just one day.
“It’s who I am and I’m a product of their sacrifices,” she said.
The prison jacket is what her father, Soloman Moses, grabbed from the camp he was being held at against his will the day U.S. forces came.
“I think it was a souvenir, in the worst possible sense. A souvenir of what he had gone through and for him to never forget,” Baum said. “He considered the day of his liberation, May 5, 1945, his birthday… it was like he was reborn.”
The service will also feature three storytellers, sharing second, third and fourth-hand stories of survivors. David Faust Halpern is one of them.
“Despite the atrocities and the horrific nature of the Holocaust, there are miracle stories of survival. In so many different ways,” Halpern said.
His parents’ reunification after four years of war is one of those miracles. He shares with WMAR-2 News that his father was taken by Russian soldiers, and his mother had to assume a fake identity, and hide with a Ukranian family.
Unlike Baum, Halpern had to learn much of what happened to his parents as an adult, and it he says it took years to coax it out of them. But now he’s working to pass it down to his children.
He also helped to translate his mother’s diary into a self-published book.
“I tell these stories to keep her voice alive, which keeps the voice of those people who were survivors alive because, there’s not many of them who are going to continue,” he said. “Perhaps it will awaken more tolerance in people.”
As war rages on in the Middle East, Antisemitism has been on the rise in the U.S.
Baum, who in her own words says she once cast doubt on her parents' concerns about safety in America as Jews, believes sharing their story is now more important than ever.
“[My father] would never imagine today’s atmosphere of Antisemitism. he would have said: ‘I would never believe that this would happen again.’”
