Surviving Scrolls, Unsilenced Voices |
At White Plains’ Garden of Remembrance on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Torahs, a shofar blast, and urgent voices confronted a community grappling with rising antisemitism.
The garden was quiet when the Torahs arrived. One by one, community members cradled ancient scrolls — some written in the mid-1800s, all having survived the Nazi attempt to erase Jewish life from Europe — and walked them in procession through White Plains’ Garden of Remembrance. On Tuesday, April 14, Westchester County’s annual Yom HaShoah commemoration drew together Holocaust survivors, elected officials, rabbis, and neighbors who stood in the spring evening air to bear witness.
Courtesy of of Aaron Herman
It was, by all accounts, a ceremony whose weight felt different this year. Post-October 7, the phrase “Never Again” has acquired new urgency. Antisemitic incidents are climbing. Children in Westchester are being confronted at shopping centers. And the last generation of survivors who can say “I was there” is fading.
I was there with a microphone. Here is what they told me.
The Torah That Came Back from the Dead
Herb Beer, a congregant at Temple Beth Abraham, held a rescued scroll and tried to put into words what he was carrying. The Torah in his hands, he explained, had been written in the mid-1800s in a small village in Czechoslovakia. It survived the Holocaust, made a journey to London, and was eventually entrusted to congregations in Westchester County — to be held until, if ever, a Jewish community rises again in that village.
“It’s survived a long time. Written in the mid-1800s, survived through the Holocaust, made a journey to London and entrusted with us here in Westchester County to hold for the future.”
— Herb Beer, Temple Beth Abraham
For Beer, who grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s, the stories of the Holocaust once felt distant — already a generation removed. They no longer do.
He reflected on the long arc of that education: “You grow up with stories. It’s frightening, but also feel prepared to know that look, that education was there for a reason. We have to be ready to stand that way against nature.” — Herb Beer
Holding the Handles of History
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