True grit on display by Holocaust survivors

Frank Cerabino

It would be easy to look into the sea of old people who filled the auditorium of a suburban Boynton Beach temple on Thursday afternoon and see frailty.

But you would be wrong. Don’t be fooled by the walkers, the trembling hands and the stooped postures.

What we had here for a few hours at the Alpert Jewish Family & Children’s Service’s annual “Café Europa” event at Temple Torat Emet was a gathering of the toughest people among us. It’s where many of the area’s nearly 300 Holocaust survivors had come to mingle with others who shared a piece of their nightmarish history.

“They’re not here for entertainment, speeches or food,” said Eva Weiss, who coordinates Holocaust survivor services at the center. “They’re just looking for others like them.”

With a median age of 87, these were the Jewish children of Europe who spent their youths in Nazi concentration camps or hiding out from camps by living in basements, attics, convents, or in the woods. Many of them watched their own family members die or disappear. And they’ve all managed to survive experiences that required an uncommon level of toughness.

“The Nazis made me dig the graves,” said Jerry Feldman, 89, of Lake Worth.

Feldman was one of a small number of Jews from a town in Czechoslovakia when World War II broke out. It scattered him and his eight brothers and sisters, and when the war was

YUTING JIANG / THE PALM BEACH POST Pierre Chanover (right), a Holocaust survivor who was born in Paris, greets his friend, Max Markovitz, at the “Café Europa” event Thursday at Temple Torat Emet in Boynton Beach.