Author, daughter of Holocaust survivors to share harrowing stories Tuesday
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (CBS) -- Stockton University's Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center will be commemorating the deaths of 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust Tuesday night as part of a Yom HaShoah memorial service.
The service includes a talk with Molly Golubcow, a South Jersey resident and daughter of Holocaust survivors.
Golubcow wrote a book, titled "The Hotel On St. James Place," which detailed her parents' experience as Holocaust survivors, their journey to America and their eventual ownership of an Atlantic City hotel called the Seacrest Hotel.
"As the next generation, I feel it's my responsibility, my duty, to keep telling these stories," Golubcow said.
She said her parents, Harry and Sonia Golubcow, were different from many Holocaust survivors because while many were hesitant to share their stories, Golubcow learned from an early age the trauma her parents went through.
Her mother fled to Russia, but her father was nearly executed.
"Everyone was lined up in front of a mass grave. My father realized what was just about to happen. He yelled out, 'Oh my God,'" Golubcow said. "One of the Nazi soldiers hit him with [a] rifle butt and said something like, 'You don't have a God,' or something, and he fell. He knocked [my father] out, and then the bullets started flying. So, he survived because he was knocked out."
Golubcow's father escaped and hid in a friend's house before living in the woods with members of the Jewish resistance.
After the war, Harry and Sonia Golubcow reconnected, married and moved to America, where they started a chicken farm in Vineland before owning Seacrest Hotel.
"I think it also speaks to, my parents and other Holocaust survivors, their strength to go on," Molly Golubcow said. "Imagine literally crawling out of a grave and figuring out how to continue your life."
The Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center's Yom HaShoah service will be held in person for the first time since the pandemic at Beth El Synagogue, located at 500 N. Jerome Ave., in Margate at 7 p.m.