Housed in Irving Locker’s garage are relics of an era many, if not most, Americans have no connection or familiarity with. A flag, armbands, a steel helmet, daggers — all emblazoned with swastikas, the adopted logo of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Locker, a resident of the Village Santo Domingo, keeps these symbols of hate and terror as keepsakes of his service. A 96-year-old World War II U.S. Army veteran, Locker landed at Utah Beach on D-Day and fought eastward to Gardelegen, about 30 miles west of Berlin, where he saw the aftermath of a massacre of war prisoners and forced laborers.
But they also carry special significance because Locker is Jewish. And 76 years after the demise of Hitler and his regime, they help him bring a story of unmitigated evil to life.
Today, in The Villages, across America and around the world, that story will be recalled as communities mark Yom HaShoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Inspired by the nation of Israel’s desire to remind themselves and the rest of the world about Nazi atrocities — the 6 million Jews slaughtered by Germany before and during World War II — Yom HaShoah in America falls during the Days of Remembrance, a weeklong period of observances mandated by Congress.
Yom HaShoah also is critical to keeping the memory alive, Locker said.
“People have no idea what the hell it was like living through the war and the Holocaust — the lives that were lost because of a religion or something else that they had no control over,” said Locker, whose service once landed him an invitation from former President Donald Trump to the State of the Union address.
“It’s a way of educating people because they have no idea. We just don’t want them to forget,” Locker said.
That is a notion shared by other Jewish military veterans, albeit younger than Locker.
For the last few years, Yom HaShoah in The Villages was hosted by St. Timothy’s Catholic Church and put on by Temple Shalom of Central Florida.
The event featured the color guard for Jewish War Veterans Post 352 in The Villages marching. Bob Pokost, commander of Post 352, said the color guard would bear the U.S. flag, the standard of their post and the flag of Israel.
Pokost, who also is a member of Post 352’s color guard, is scheduled, as leader of the JWV, to spend a few minutes on video discussing the post’s activities in this year’s virtual ceremony. It’s important that Post 352 get a voice in the ceremony, Pokost said.
“It’s something that must be said: We must never, never forget,” said Pokost, a Navy Vietnam veteran who resides in the Village of Tall Trees. “It’s very important that we get the message out and that we work toward a better society.”
Stu Lesser, who founded and leads the Post 352 color guard, said he appreciated that St. Timothy’s was always full for Yom HaShoah. When stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas in the early 1960s, someone painted a swastika on his door. Lesser said he wasn’t trying to hide his Jewish heritage but he didn’t broadcast it either.
“I took it as someone trying to be funny. But I didn’t think it was funny at all. It was a little bit intimidating,” said Lesser.
“That’s why it’s important that the Holocaust be remembered. Ceremonies like Yom HaShoah keep that terrible event in front of the public, and just the fact that it’s written about and taught helps keep something like that from happening again.”
According to Temple Shalom, between 1,200 and 1,500 people typically attended the ceremony Post 352’s color guard participated in.
“It’s logical for the Jewish War Veterans to do it, but I’m glad to see so many non-Jewish people there,” said Lesser, a resident of the Village of Belle Aire who served in the Air Force for 42 years. “This is one way to keep it (the Holocaust) in front of the public. The Jews got the publicity, but millions of non-Jews were also killed.”
In addition to Jews, Hitler unleashed his murderous fanaticism on Poles, Catholics, homosexuals, the Roma people, the mentally and physically disabled and Jehovah’s Witnesses, according to the Jewish Virtual Library. All were among the hundreds of thousands who were not Jewish, yet consigned to die in concentration camps.
“It wasn’t just the Jewish people,” Lesser said. “It was a terrible thing, and I don’t think anybody wants to see it repeated again.”
But Jews, of course, will remain the focus of today’s reflections on the tragedy of that moment.
And Dave Litwack, first vice commander of Post 352, has a personal connection to that.
His mother’s family, including seven of her siblings, perished during the Holocaust in Poland, he said. His mother survived because she had immigrated to Canada before Hitler rose to power.
“Everybody in the world knew what was happening at that time, even in the United States,” said Litwack, a resident of the Village of Lake Deaton and a retired Air Force fighter pilot who served in Vietnam. “And nobody was willing to do anything.”
“Hopefully, we would never see that again, but it has been repeated since then. It’s not unique where people were gathered up and murdered,” added Litwack, referencing Russia under Joseph Stalin and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
Herb Siegel, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who now leads the Jewish genealogy SIG in The Villages, served a tour in Germany during the 1970s.
The Germans, he recalled, did not commemorate Yom HaShoah. But German schoolchildren did tour the concentration camp at Dachau as part of their curriculum, and as a way for the German government to explain what the children’s ancestors did.
Siegel said at times he was “uncomfortable” being in Germany, even though it was 30 years after World War II. Feeding that discomfort were his family’s visits to concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. And it’s unsettling that, through his genealogy research, he cannot find any trace of his Polish ancestors beyond his grandparents.
“I had my job to do, which was to protect Europe, which meant protecting the Germans,” said Siegel, of the Village of Hillsborough. “I think soldiers see it differently. We had a job to do.”
Still, he added, “To believe that a civilized nation could do these horrible acts is beyond comprehension.”
R. Bruce Anderson, a political science professor at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, takes an annual trip to the German concentration camps with some of his students.
He characterized the German reaction to the Holocaust as “complex” and influenced by which generation they come from.
Whereas Germans once visited the camps in the east as “mostly celebration of the victorious communists rather than an examination of the Nazi past,” Anderson said, Holocaust history became required instruction in public schools and among the police and Army to acknowledge the Nazi atrocities.
Local veterans also have taken it upon themselves to carry the message. Locker visits schools and recently presented over Zoom to a group of about 50 teachers in Virginia.
Siegel once visited schools to give lectures on the Holocaust when he lived in Miami. He’s dismayed by the ignorance he encountered, which, he believes, is evident today — as shown by a largely lackadaisical attitude toward the treatment of Muslim Uyghus in China, he said.
“It’s important that we don’t forget. You have to know about it so it doesn’t begin again. That’s the whole reason for teaching it. Holocausts can begin again.”
Staff writer Bill Thompson can be reached at 352-753-1119, ext. 5228, or william.thompson@thevillagesmedia.com.
The Link LonkApril 08, 2021 at 05:00PM
https://www.thevillagesdailysun.com/news/villages/ceremonies-mark-era-we-must-never-forget/article_5518d8fc-9819-11eb-b670-3fae8377a42d.html
Ceremonies mark era ‘We must never forget’ - The Villages Daily Sun
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