[Cz-L] January 27: In Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust

Bukoviners and all list members,

Today is (or shortly will be) January 27, the observance of the
International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the
Holocaust. Many of us are survivors, or children of survivors of
Transnistria. It is on this day, that we pay tribute to the memory of
the martyrs and the tortured souls of the survivors..

I would urge you to read the story of how we immortalized the dead,
adding Transnistria to the map of concentration camps in the Hall of
Remembrance at the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

How we made sure that the killing fields and “bone-yard” area of
Transnistria was acknowledged as one of the major Romanian extermination
camps for the whole world to remember.

The Story:

In June, 1996,I was invited to the “International Scholars' Conference
on The Fate of Romanian and Ukrainian Jewry Under the Antonescu Regime”
at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,D.C. and give a lecture
on the topic of my book RUTH'S JOURNEY: A Survivor's Memoir, which
recounts my experience as a child under that regime.

After the conference, I was privileged to lay the wreath at the eternal
flame in the Hall of Remembrance to honor the 300,000 victims who
perished in Transnistria. While I felt very emotional about that honor,
I was deeply saddened to notice that the name of TRANSNISTRIA was
nowhere to be seen on the walls alongside the names of all the
recognized concentration camps.

After my presentation, I made a plea to the Research Institute to
correct this oversight on behalf of both victims and survivors. I also
took it upon myself to right an egregious wrong.

It took two years before these efforts were crowned with success; the
Museum officially recognized that tragic chapter of the Holocaust.

A year later the architect designed a plan to add the name TRANSNISTRIA
to the panels listing concentration camps on the wall in the HALL of
REMEMBRANCE.

In 1998 the project was finished. At this point I suggested that an
official date for the unveiling ceremony should be scheduled and all
Transnistria survivors invited to be present at this solemn moment for
which we patiently waited and yearned for so many years.

I thought it would be most appropriate that the unveiling be linked to
the forthcoming visit of president Constantinescu, the first Romanian
President to acknowledge his country’s participation in the genocide of
300,000 Romanian Jews during the Holocaust. It would also be one more
strike against the deniers in Romania and other countries.

The Director of the Office of Survivor Affairs agreed, and invited all
the survivors and their families to come to Washington D.C. on April 17
and 18, 1999 to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust in Romania.
There were over 300 people in the audience.

The rest is history.
Ruth Glasberg Gold - 2011

The above is a somewhat shortened version of the story. The complete
story including documents, and photographs of the unveiling ceremony are
at:
http://czernowitz.ehpes.com/stories/ruth-trans/

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Received on 2012-01-26 17:09:16