'We are a people of memory'
LEISAH NAMM
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 On March 31, the Arizona State Board of Education honored the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association for their "contributions in developing sensitivity and understanding among all cultures." Pictured, from left, are Helen Handler, Ella Adler, David Kader, Harry Adler and Carl Ofisher. At the award presentation, two survivors - Ofisher and Dolly Redner - spoke about their experiences of speaking to public school children. Photo courtesy of David Kader |
Since 1987, Carl Ofisher estimates he has spoken at 86 different Arizona schools, many that he's visited multiple times or every year.
When he started, he spoke to classrooms with 30 students; now he speaks in school auditoriums with up to 800 students at one time.
Ofisher requests about 1-1/2 to two hours for his presentation and to answer any questions.
"I was in a ghetto, five concentration camps, three death marches," Ofisher says. "I speak not from a piece of paper - I just go back from the day the war started until the end."
Although he has told his story so many times, it hasn't gotten any easier, because, in a sense, he returns to his childhood each time. "You go back to the time when you saw your mom go into the gas chamber, when they separated you from the family, hiding in the ghetto, the death marches," he says. He was liberated from Gunzkirchen in Austria on May 2, 1945, when he was 19 years old, weighing 55 pounds. He came to the United States in 1951 and lived in Chicago for 33 years before coming to the Valley in 1984.
Ofisher, a speaker in the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association's Speaker Bureau, travels all over Arizona to speak to students from Flagstaff and Prescott to Globe and Sierra Vista. Outside of Arizona, he has also traveled to Sullivan, Ill., with the Anti-Defamation League and, in 2001, to the Washington Holocaust Museum where he spoke to about 500 students from around the country.
"Many teachers (are) very good friends," Ofisher says. "We call each other by our first names because I speak so many times in those schools."
David Kader, president of the association and one of its founders, estimates that in about 15 years, the Speakers' Bureau has reached hundreds of schools and thousands of young people.
In March, the Arizona State Board of Education recognized the Survivors' Association and presented a plaque to Kader and survivors Ofisher and Dolly Redner. The plaque read: "Presented to Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association in appreciation of your contribution in developing sensitivity and understanding among all cultures."
Ofisher estimates that there are about 150 local Holocaust survivors. Other association members include husbands and wives and children of Holocaust survivors, which brings the total to about 220 members.
Once a month, survivors meet for dinner at Caf‚ Europa, at Beth El Congregation. "They come and talk to each other (and) sometimes we have nice entertainment," Ofisher says. They don't discuss the Holocaust. "When we get together, we want to forget about the camps," he says. "We just talk about whatever comes to mind."
Other members who are part of the Speaker's Bureau are Ella Adler, winter visitor Fred Baron, Harry Fern, Helen Handler, Magda Herzberger, Anna Koenig, Dolly Redner, Bernard Schuer, Betty Schimmel and Dr. Alexander White.
Adler, who was a prisoner of several concentration camps, will speak at a Holocaust Memorial Concert on April 29 at Temple Beth Israel (see box at right).
A Yom Hashoah commemoration hosted by the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association, titled "Voices Past, Voices Present," will feature four survivors - Helen Handler, Carl Ofisher, Dolly Redner and Betty Schimmel - who will talk about what their past experiences mean to them now and about the meaning of memory in their lives.
It will be held 3 p.m. Sunday, April 27, at Beth El Congregation in Phoenix.
The program will also include a procession of survivors, who will enter the room carrying yartzheit candles to the bimah before taking their seats, as well as remarks by Kader, Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of Temple Beth Sholom and Rabbi Albert Plotkin, rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth Israel.
The recipient of the annual Shofar Zakhor Award, which recognizes substantial contributions to Holocaust remembrance, will be announced and local cantors will participate in the musical aspect of the program, coordinated by Cantor Mikhal Shiff-Matter of Temple Beth Israel.
The Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association, an independent agency serving the Holocaust survivors of Phoenix, was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Arizona in June 1985. Founders of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association are Harry and Ella Adler, Anna Koenig and Kader, who is a second-generation survivor.
The association was started with a number of primary purposes, says Kader. These include conducting "a dignified and meaningful communitywide Yom Hashoah commemoration," bringing together survivors in the community for social and educational purposes, assisting with needs - such as information over reparations developments - and "conveying the truth of the Shoah to those who would listen."
"We are a people of memory," says Kader. "What we remember, how we remember, when we remember defines our community. We are presently in a very special season of remembrance - that starts with Purim and will end with Shavuot.
"Along the way, we experience the ancient seder marking Passover and the modern Yom Tovs - of the Shoah and Israel's Independence. From rescue, to exodus, to destruction and national renewal; from memory may come redemption."
Call the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association at 602-788-7003.