n the morning of April 18, Miriam and Irving Borenstein rode the subway from their home in Brooklyn to the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Outside the museum, located in Manhattan’s Battery Park City, tulips blossomed, the sun reflected on the water, and temperatures rose into the 70s. Rollerbladers, Rolex watch peddlers, sun worshippers, pretzel vendors, and tourists filled the park.

Inside the museum, the scene was somber. Almost two weeks after Passover, the holiday celebrating Jewish freedom and the exodus from Egypt, the Borensteins and at least two dozen Holocaust survivors came to share their stories on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

hey choose to reopen painful memories so younger generations don’t forget, and history doesn’t repeat itself. Everyday they live with the memories of the Holocaust, but on this day they relive it.

Since opening its doors in 1997, the museum has marked Holocaust Remembrance Day with special events such as concerts and films. It co-sponsors the annual ceremony at the Temple Emanu-El in midtown Manhattan, where over 2,000 survivors and their families light candles and remember the six million Jews murdered under Adolf Hitler. The date is observed annually according to the date that corresponds to the 27th of the month of Nissan on the Hebrew calendar.

“We have a quote that is our motto: ‘Remember, never forget,’” says Rina Goldberg, the museum’s director of special projects, quoting a passage from Deuteronomy in the Bible. “It is the ritual of setting aside one day a year to say we will remember that keeps it fresh in our minds and insures it doesn’t happen again.”

Nevertheless there is a growing concern that the stories will be lost as Holocaust survivors die. Attendance at the ceremony has declined by some 100 people a year over the last four years. The museum tries to attract more people by advertising in the Jewish press.

The ceremony itself remains unchanged. In the back of the grand temple, at 65th Street and Fifth avenue, a banner reading, “We shall never forget our 6 million Jewish Martyrs” hangs on the balcony. A procession of female survivors veiled in black lights candles. The Israeli national anthem is sung in both English and Yiddish.

urvivors such as Miriam Borenstein say it’s a struggle to tell their stories. Miriam lives with the memories everyday, and holds back tears when she talks about her three and a half months in the Auschwitz concentration camp. She first spoke of the experience 25 years ago when she was 54-years-old.

She decided to open up when her children and grandchildren asked her to talk about her experiences at their schools. Later, Borenstein shared her story with the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive to further the cause of remembrance.

The journey to remembering was anything but easy.

“There are no benefits [to remembering]; it is very painful to this day. All of us have open wounds that have never healed, and probably never will,” she says.

A native Czech, she was 21 when she arrived at Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland, with her mother. They were separated and she later found out that her mother was killed the very same day. She recalls the scant meals, the friends she lost, and the terror of not knowing whether she would come out dead or alive. She says she still lives with the guilt of survival.

“I’m not better than someone else, maybe I’m worse, who knows,” she says holding back tears. “There are some wonderful people that perished.”

owever, it was at Auschwitz that she found her husband, an American GI. They met in June 1945, a month after she was liberated, and married on January 10, 1946. She came to the U.S. as a war bride, speaking only Yiddish. The couple settled in Brooklyn, had three sons, and will celebrate their 59th wedding anniversary next year.

The Borensteins want to pass their memories to their three children and four grandchildren.

“As we’re getting closer to the end we just realize that these wounds will not heal, but we also have to tell the world what we went on…anti-Semitism is spreading so we survivors who are still alive have to let the world know that we witnessed this, and that we survived,” she says.

Holocaust Remembrance Day Amy Wu

New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage is a living memorial to the Holocaust.

Miriam and Irving Borenstein of Brooklyn met each other at Auschwitz.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked by signs of spring.

• Museum of Jewish Heritage
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center
• Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  

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