JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Turning family Holocaust memories into a movement.
One Jacksonville family is working to make that happen.
As we recognize Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wednesday evening through Thursday, Suzie Pollak Becker walked News4JAX through a special memorial gallery on Jacksonville’s Southside displaying photos of family heirlooms, artifacts that survived the holocaust.
Eighty years after the Holocaust, more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive but 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years — meaning time is running out to hear the voices of the last generation who suffered through one of the worst atrocities in history.
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“We call up and my cousins and I will have these conversations. Like, did you ever hear the one where Bubbe, that’s Yiddish for grandma, found a matchstick on the grounds of Auschwitz, and she drew on eyebrows because this way she would look prettier? Could you imagine having that kind of interest in your dignity under those circumstances?” Becker said.
Becker says she grew up in Brooklyn, New York and heard countless stories like this, about her grandparents.
Both her grandfathers, from Romania, survived the Holocaust.
She says their wives and children did not.
“So his wife and children were murdered, and the home that he lived in was attached to lumber mills and forests that they owned, and somewhere on the land is where he hid it,” she said.
Suzie’s talking about a traditional spice box she says her grandfather Yosef Pollak quickly buried near his home before the Nazis came.
After surviving the atrocities that sparked World War II, Suzie says Yosef returned home and retrieved it, still intact, as he looked for ways to revive Jewish traditions.
“He established the first ritual bath house because he understood that for a Kosher community to exist, they needed to have some of those very deep-seeded traditions in place, so a Kosher butcher and a Kosher bath house,” she said.
A photo of that spice box, and her other grandfather’s prayer book are among several pictures now on display of cherished family artifacts, with stories behind each one.
They’re stories for anyone to read in the Holocaust Memorial Gallery at The LJD Jewish Family & Community Services headquarters.
Suzie’s own family stories, she makes sure to share with her school-age children, who undoubtedly feel the connection.
“If they don’t learn who they are and where they come from, how can they learn to be patient, to listen to who you are and where you come from, and to find what it is not that divides us, but what unites us? What can you and me unite to overcome together?” she said.
Below, you can watch the entire “Discover the Joy” podcast episode with Suzie in which she explains her son’s project pledge and more stories about her grandparents who survived the Holocaust.