EVERETT — For Rabbi Harley Karz-Wagman, Sunday’s interfaith Holocaust commemoration in Everett will be as much about the present day as it is about Nazi Germany.
Just as many people today believe nothing like the Holocaust could ever occur again, few before the rise of Hitler could have imagined that a country as advanced and cultured as Germany would practice genocide, he said.
"Germany was one of the most open societies in the world, and Jews felt safe," Karz-Wagman said. "But we know from history that feeling safe — as we do today in America — is no guarantee."
Karz-Wagman’s Temple Beth Or synagogue in Everett has long sponsored a Snohomish County commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is actually April 19.
Last year, Karz-Wagman made it an interfaith event. This year, Central Lutheran Church in Everett is hosting the commemoration, which is sponsored by Temple Beth Or, the Greater Everett Ministerium and the Interfaith Council of Snohomish County.
Central Lutheran’s pastor, the Rev. Jeff Russell, said Lutherans have a special obligation to never forget the Holocaust.
"The tragic fact is that the land of Luther is where the Holocaust occurred," he said. "There were many Lutherans who worked against Hitler, but unfortunately the official state church acquiesced with Hitler."
Resistance to bigotry will be the theme of this year’s commemoration. Resistance not only means marching in the streets, as hundreds did to protest the recent cross-burning in Arlington, Karz-Wagman said, it’s also standing up for those who are targets of bigotry.
"If you let prejudice sit out there without countering it, it will grow," he said. "So when you hear a bigoted statement, speak out against it. Don’t just be offended by it. Say something. That’s what changes people’s attitudes."
Karz-Wagman said that, in the end, speaking out against hatred benefits everyone, because anyone can become a target of bigotry.
"What you do today to gays, we can do tomorrow to blacks, to Asians, to Native Americans or to Muslims, the new target group," he said. "The danger is not just to Jews."
"It could happen to any group at any time, depending on the will of the people in power," said Janet Pope, executive director of the interfaith association. "The faith community needs to come together on these issues."
Temple Beth Or member Greta Ehrlich is convinced the same type of economic hardship that led many Germans, Austrians and others to take their anger and resentment out on Jews could again lead to scapegoating of Jews or other groups.
"When things are bad, you always have to have someone to blame," Ehrlich said.
Ehrlich, 80, lived in Austria during the rise of Hitler and lost her parents and most of her relatives in the Holocaust.
Nearly six decades later, she said, it’s still vital to remind people of the factors that led to it.
"You hear people say, ‘How long are we going to talk about this?’ " she said. "But you don’t want people to forget. There’s still a lot of anti-Semitism. The people who went through this are gradually dying out, so we have to put the story in front of people now so they know it really happened."
Ehrlich said she would have probably died in the Holocaust, too, if her parents hadn’t sent her and her brother to England in 1939.
"Our parents sent us away to save our lives," she said. "They sent us away because they knew we wouldn’t survive otherwise."
Ehrlich said her parents were hoping to join them, but no country would take them.
Ehrlich was allowed to go to England through the Kindertransport, a program authorized by the British government that allowed nearly 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children to escape Germany, Austria and what was then Czechoslovakia. Like Ehrlich, most never saw their parents again.
Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com.
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