Gathering Pays Tribute During Holocaust Remembrance Day
MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) - More than a hundred South Floridians gathered at Miami Beach's Holocaust Memorial on Sunday in observance of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).
The observance is to honor the memory of the six million Jewish people who died and pay tribute to those who survived the Holocaust.
"I remember the terror and the trauma I remember the shouting in the streets I remember the fear," said Wendy Rothfield.
She was just four years old when she says her mother and father escape with her.
"We were the only ones in our family that escaped. Everyone was rounded up sent to concentration camps and murdered. Everyone."
"Women with children to the left men to the right," said Dziubakh who described how families were split up as they were led away at Auschwitz camp.
Dziubakh said the images of a German soldier are burned into mind much like his identity number is tattooed on his arm.
"I was on my knees crying and screaming, he opened up, he pulled the trigger 'clack' nothing there," said Dziubakh, "He pulled the second trigger 'clack' nothing there, he got mad he threw the shotgun down on the ground.
The event, sponsored by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, will be 6:30 p.m. The program will include prayers, songs, a candlelighting ceremony and a choral presentation by the Second Avenue Jewish Chorale. Prior to the ceremony, the names of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were read aloud.
Aranka Siegal, a novelist and recipient of the Newbery Honor and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, will share her personal experiences from the Holocaust. Siegal was born in the town of Berehove, Czechoslovakia. At the age of 13, she and her family were forcibly relocated the Jewish ghetto. She was later sent to the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps before being rescued by British forces in 1945.
The Honorable Chaim Shacham, Consul General of Israel to Florida and Puerto Rico, will also participate and speak at the event.
The Holocaust Memorial is located at 1933-45 Meridian Avenue, Miami Beach. Free parking is available south of the Memorial.
