“I would say, keep your eyes open. And if you see something, no matter how small an incident, do something about it. Don’t say `It will pass.’”

In 1934, 14-year-old Margot Wolf Capell was preparing to be the valedictorian of her grade school class in Rülzheim, Germany. However, her teacher told her that the Nazi Regime would not allow a Jew to hold this honor. The rise of anti-Semitism was slow and gradual. Her best friend stopped speaking to her. One neighbor allowed Margot to sneak into the movie theater. As soon as Margot turned 18, she became an eyewitness to Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, barely fleeing the local synagogue in time. Fearing for her safety, Margot’s mother sent her to England through an organization that helped Jews go there as housekeepers. She spent a year and a half in England before traveling to the United States to live with her uncle. Margot’s brother built a new life in Sweden, but her parents were killed in Nazi-occupied Europe. As a refugee to the United States, she began a new life and married World War II veteran Eric Capell. Margot has spoken to many youth on Staten Island about her experiences.

Only nine years old when Hitler came to power, Egon faced rising anti-Semitism in his hometown of Rheydt, Germany (near Dusseldorf). On Kristallnacht--the “Night of Broken Glass”, November 9th 1938, the S.S. took Egon’s father Paul to Dachau Concentration Camp. He was released a few weeks later on condition that he leave Germany. Paul came to the U.S. to again try to procure visas, but was only able to find refuge in Cuba. Shortly before his 15^th birthday, Egon set sail on the liner the S.S. St. Louis with his mother Erna and sister Edith. When Cuba and the U.S. turned the refugees away, this “voyage of the damned” was sent back to Nazi Germany. At the last moment, they found haven in Belgium for a year. Just before the Nazi invasion in 1940, Paul, Erna, Edith and Egon Salmon joined other Jewish refugees in Staten Island. While a student at New Dorp High School, Egon was drafted into the U.S. army. As soon as he graduated, he served in the Italian Campaign. In 1956, he established a real estate firm on Staten Island that continues to thrive. The Salmon family has contributed to Jewish life and the broader community in America.

Romi Cohn was only 10 years old in October 1938 when Germany invaded his hometown of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. “I was condemned to be dead, to be murdered,” Cohn remembered. By 1942, when deportations escalated, 13-year old Romi fled illegally over the border to Hungary. Separated from four younger siblings and his mother--all of whom would later perish in the camps-- and unable to speak Hungarian, Romi knew he could easily be exposed as an illegal Jewish refugee. Romi studied in a yeshiva until, forced to flee back to Slovakia, he became a member of the underground. He eventually helped 58 refugee families by supplying them with false papers. Almost caught, he decided to join the Slovakian partisans in the mountains. He forged a Nazi travel document to reach the forest. At age 16, disguised as a Christian partisan, Romi participated in the capture of German soldiers. He recalled his life story in his memoir, The Youngest Partisan. Rabbi Cohn had a home on Staten Island, where he was also a mohel, from 1976 until his recent passing on March 24, 2020.

The teenage daughter of a well-respected journalist, Ruchama Rothstein grew up in Warsaw, Poland. After the Nazi occupation of Poland, in Fall of 1939, her father was quickly targeted and forced to flee to Palestine. The remaining family moved to the Warsaw Ghetto. She suffered from hunger, while compelled to do forced labor. In the summer of 1942, the Nazis deported and killed all her close family members. Still working, Rachel managed to smuggle in a few weapons used in the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising in April 1943. The Nazis deported those who survived and, alongside her aunt Hela, Rachel faced hard labor, illness and deprivation in Majdanek, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. To sustain hope, she would describe to other camp inmates the Shabbat dinners in her home before the war. One older woman in Majdanek made Rachel promise to write about her experiences if she survived. After the war, Rachel was reunited with her father in Palestine. Today, Rachel, author of Here There Is no Why, talks about the Shoah at local schools. Rachel lived on Staten Island with her five children and husband, Shlomo until 2006. She now resides in Manhattan, New York.

This photo, in which Rachel Roth appears as a young girl, was taken at a wedding held inside the Warsaw ghetto. At the end of the war, Rachel was the only person still alive.

Benjamin Wayne (b. 1927) attended Hebrew school in his hometown of Michalovce, Czechoslovakia, before enrolling at age 10 in public school (Gymnasium). He faced the anti-Semitism of the Nazi-supported Slovak People’s Party Hlinka Guards; in March 1939 Slovakia declared independence from Czechoslovakia. He was no longer allowed in school, and after September 1941, was forced to wear the Star of David, but avoided three deportations. In 1943, Benjamin and his family smuggled themselves across the border into Hungary, only to be separated and sent to an internment camp. Benjamin escaped. Now 16-years old, he worked with Jewish underground organizations in Budapest, delivering illegal documents and food stamps. In 1944 he was reunited with his family except for his sister Nancy, who was in the Budapest ghetto. Eventually he helped her escape, and they hid inside of an estate until the Russians liberated them in 1945. Benjamin feels that he survived to tell the world about what happened. He holds in his hands a plaque from his hometown to commemorate the 3800 Jews that were deported and murdered.

“My heart races back to you” [Faja Szivel Vissza in hungarian]

Hannah grew up in Oradea, Romania, a large city of theaters, opera and universities. She helped her mother Helen with sewing, made ragdolls and played the violin. In 1941, the Hungarian police took away Helen’s license. Hannah and her mother were forced to move to Budapest, Hungary and wear the Yellow Star. Hannah fell in love at 15-years old with Abraham, whom she met at a dance. Her young mother, only 17 years older, always tagged along as a chaperone. On March 19, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary. Hannah’s boyfriend was taken to a labor camp, her brother escaped to Brazil, her sister was killed, and she and her mother were put on a train to Auschwitz. She credits her mother’s love for her survival. To distract from the hunger, “We were cooking…verbally. Cooking verbally. We cooked! We cooked-we said this, my mother did this and you did this. That was- we were cooking the whole day.” They were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated. Tragically, Helen died of typhus in Hannah’s arms two weeks later. Weighing 62 pounds, she was taken to Sweden to recuperate. A few years later, when she was reunited in Israel with Abraham, he said to her: “‘I don't know what you think but I don't think that I didn’t see you for seven years, I think I didn’t see you for two weeks.” She moved to Brazil, then Brooklyn and in 2000, to Staten Island.

Arnold Aronowitz was six years old when his father was beaten to death by the German army in 1943. Arnold and his parents, John and Esther Aronowitz, lived in Falticeni, Romania. With over 725,000 Jews, Romania had one of the largest populations of Jews in Europe (four percent). John, a highly respected Romanian army veteran, ran a profitable lumber mill business. In 1940, Romania joined the Axis Alliance. In the summer of 1941, passing through Romania to the Soviet Union, several German army officers stayed in John, Esther and Arnold’s home as well as in nearby synagogues. The Germans were friendly to them and Arnold remembers the officers carrying him on their shoulders. However, as persecution worsened, Arnold’s father John began to organize resistance. In August 1941, Jews were ordered to wear the Yellow Star and report for forced labor. When the Germans returned, John was murdered. He and his mother came to New York after this tragedy.

Growing up in Záluz, Czechoslovakia, Shirley Gottesman lived on a farm with her parents Laizer Berger and Blima Weinberg Gottesman, four siblings, Moshe Lieb (Martin), Fiaga, Ester and Rifka, her grandparents Malka and Zalman Berger and other relatives. Only Martin and Shirley survived the Holocaust. Before the war, Shirley’s mother was a seamstress and her father a farmer. Cows, chickens and geese roamed the fields and potatoes, beans, vegetables and fruit were plentiful. In April 1944, Shirley’s family was forced to pack up and move to the ghetto. Packed into a cattle car for three days, 16-year old Shirley traveled with her invalid grandmother and helped deliver a stillborn baby. After this horror, they arrived in Auschwitz. Shirley heard a call for nurses and was assigned to Kanada, an area where clothing was sorted that belonged to those killed. In the pockets, there might be a bit of extra bread or sardines, that helped her survive. During the October 1944 uprising, Shirley heard the Jewish prisoners revolt and sing the Hatikvah, later the national anthem of Israel. Her experiences have been published as: Red Polka-Dotted Dress: A Memoir of Kanada II.

Chaim Wylonzi grew up as the youngest of five brothers in Ostrolenka, Poland (75 miles from Warsaw). When the Nazis invaded, Jews were ordered to leave the town. At age 7, he crossed into Lomza, then Derechin, towns in Russia and not under Nazi rule. When Germany attacked Russia in June 1941, his brother Yitzchak bribed a German soldier to get Chaim and his mother out. For two years, Chaim witnessed tragedy in the Vilna ghetto. Only 11 years old in September 1943, Chaim was then sent to a labor camp, Kivioli I. Later that month, the Nazis exterminated his parents and others still in Vilna. Chaim and Yitzchak, skilled shoemakers for the German Army, went back to Germany but hunger was severe. A former neighbor would sneak them food scraps. After the war, Chaim and Yitzchak were smuggled into Israel on Christmas Eve, 1945. He changed his name from Chaim Wylonzi to Chaim Ben Aron (Son of Aron), in honor of his parents. Chaim lived there until moving to Staten Island in 1960. He is pictured here in front of the Ark with Torah Scrolls at Congregation Ohel Abraham.

Born in Romania in 1924, Rachel went to school with children of all religious backgrounds. Her grandfather was a butcher who sold kosher meat. During the war, Rachel faced great hardship, before being deported to Auschwitz in April 1944 during an arduous 3-day journey. In the last car of many trains of Hungarians, she initially went with her mother and younger sister towards the gas chambers during the “selection.” But then, in a difficult moment, she let go of their hand and ran with a friend across to the other line. She arrived in the United States in 1962. Rachel has lived on Staten Island for over 30 years.