Honoring Holocaust Survivors

Henry Blumenstein was not yet 4, but he remembers the day his father was arrested and taken from their home in Vienna, Austria, to the Dachau labor camp in Germany.

His father was among the more than 30,000 Jews arrested Nov. 9, 1938, on Krystalnacht. On that night mobs stormed Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues throughout Germany, which included Austria.

Blumenstein’s father spent three months in the slave labor camp before his mother was able to pay for his release, but he had to leave the country immediately. His father went to Cuba and Blumenstein, his mother and grandmother began a journey to escape Nazi capture and join him.

The Progress Club Foundation held a brunch Sunday at the in Rockville to celebrate the lives of the 50 Holocaust survivors living in the communities.

“This is the second of what I consider an ongoing teaching exercise for all of us to listen and pay our respects,” Joel Appelbaum, co-chairman of the Progress Club Foundation said.

Not all of the survivors living in the community were able to attend, said Andrew S. Friedlander, chairman of the Charles E. Smith Life Communities.

“Our mission is to make this their home and help them feel safe, loved and nurtured in a nurturing environment,” he said.

Blumenstein, 76, moved into the Ring House two weeks ago from Cincinnati to be near his sons. He told the gathering his story, joined by Sjoukje Dykstra of the Netherlands, granddaughter of the farm family that hid Blumenstein from the Germans.

Blumenstein and his mother boarded the SS St. Louis heading for Cuba in May 1939. The 937 Jewish refugees on board were denied entry to Cuba, the United States or any other country in the Americas and returned to Europe. Belgium agreed to accept 214 refugees, France agreed to accept 224, Great Britain agreed to accept 228 and Holland agreed to accept 181, including Blumenstein, his mother and grandmother. More than one-third of those on board ended up in concentration camps, Blumenstein said.

“When you think about the Holocaust, think about those countries that said nothing,” he said. “Silence was very big.”

The family lived in a Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam until the Nazis arrested his grandmother. After that, Blumenstein and his mother were on the run, moving from place to place trying to stay a step ahead of the Nazis.

“Eventually she knew we couldn’t run all the time,” Blumenstein said.

Dykstra’s family took in Blumenstein, then 8, and another Jewish boy. He never saw his mother again. In 1978, Blumenstein found someone who told him what happened to his mother. His mother, he said, having lost her entire family, gave up and committed suicide.

“After we had separated she made herself visible and was caught,” he said.

Blumenstein and his father were reunited in the United States after the war. Dykstra’s family repeats the story of the war and the Jewish children that lived with them every May 5 — Dutch Holocaust Remembrance Day, she said.

Two representatives of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., asked those in the room to consider donating any artifacts they have from 1920 through 1950.

“We aren’t going to be around much longer to tell the story of our history,” said Johanna Neumann, a museum planned giving associate, who lived in Albania during the war. Albania did not deport any Jews to concentration camps.