Legacy's vow: to never forget

Sonia Weitz, of Peabody, who was born in Krakow, Poland, and survived five Nazi death camps. (David Kamerman/Globe Staff)

They survived the horrors of mass extermination. Most of their relatives have no grave site to remember them by - they were shipped in cattle cars from ghettos to concentration camps, gassed, and then burned in crematorium ovens.

There are an estimated 300 Holocaust survivors still living in Greater Boston, according to the Holocaust Center, Boston North, in Peabody. While a dozen speak regularly at schools, churches, and temples, most have kept their stories to themselves.

Now, Sonia Weitz and members of the Holocaust Center want those stories to be heard. They've established the Holocaust Legacy Partner program, which pairs Holocaust survivors with individuals who pledge to tell the survivor's story to the public. The legacy partners - called guardians of the Holocaust - make a commitment to tell the survivor's story by presenting a detailed biography about the survivor's life during the Holocaust, and also by using a DVD that features the survivor's testimony.

"I think it's timely, because survivors are dying every day," said Weitz, of Peabody, who cofounded the Holocaust Center with Harriet Wacks. Weitz, who was born in Krakow, Poland, survived five Nazi death camps - Plaszow, Auschwitz, Ber gen-Belsen, Venusberg, and Mauthausen.

"This is one way we think that will really preserve the memory and the legacy and it will come as close as possible to the eyewitness," she said.

Neil Donnenfeld of Swampscott, who also helped create the program, believes it will have a broader impact on people who have heard about modern-day acts of genocide. "This is not only relevant for the Jews, and what happened during World War II. It's relevant for Darfur, it's relevant for Rwanda; it's relevant today, and if we don't learn from history, then we're destined to repeat it," he said.

To date, eight people have pledged to tell survivors' stories, but dozens more have expressed interest as word of mouth has spread. Wacks, of the Holocaust Center, said she hopes to produce dozens of 30-minute videos of survivors that can be used for the project.

At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Sarah Ogilvie said the Peabody-based program was the only project she had learned about that is using non survivors to help tell the stories.

"The purpose, I think, is something that all of us that deal with this topic are struggling with - which is, how will we deal with the survivor voice in the future when we don't have the person around to give the direct testimony?" said Ogilvie, director of the museum's National Institute for Holocaust Education.

For decades after World War II, many Holocaust survivors went about rebuilding their lives and starting new families in the United States. Few spoke publicly about the Holocaust until the 1970s, when books about Holocaust denial began to be published. That's when thousands of survivors - like Weitz, and Rena Finder of Framingham - formed grass-roots support groups, and decided to speak out about Nazi oppression and their experiences in ghettos and death camps.

Weitz estimates that she has spoken to more than 3,000 groups about the Holocaust over the last 30 years, and she still gives about 100 talks a year. In 1986, she helped heal Catholic-Jewish relations in Boston when she accompanied Cardinal Bernard Law to Auschwitz, where as a teenager she was subjected to the smell of burning flesh every day.

On a recent Sunday, as she prepared to speak before a group of teenagers at a Swampscott synagogue, Weitz embraced Mary Kiley. Kiley, who teaches Hebrew Bible studies at St. John's Prep in Danvers, has heard Weitz speak several times at her school, and has pledged to be Weitz's legacy partner.

"I consider it such a humbling honor to carry on her story. It's a real sacred trust," said Kiley, who is starting to research the Peabody's poet's transformation, from a young child in 1938 to a 60-pound 16-year-old who was barely alive when the war ended in 1945.

"I really want to immerse myself in her story," said Kiley, who takes a group of students every year to the holocaust museum in Washington. Kiley said she plans to begin telling Weitz's story next fall.

Weitz wants Kiley to emphasize that genocide cannot take place without the tacit approval of the public. "The big message from me is, don't be a bystander. I talk about stereotyping, and scapegoating, and bullying, and how important it is that they stand up for another person in trouble. There's nothing lonelier than a victim who is forgotten," said Weitz.

Last month, in a classroom at Malden Catholic High School, Rena Finder's image flickered on a TV screen, her voice recalling her father's death at the hands of the Nazis, and of how she was saved by German industrialist Oskar Schindler - who was the subject of Steven Spielberg's movie, "Schindler's List."

"He [Schindler ] had a smile and a kind word for everyone, especially for the children," Finder says in the video.

When the video ended, Cindy Jacobs - the school's guidance director - talked more about Finder's work in Schindler's factory, and how she was able to survive and travel to Framingham 63 years ago.

"It's a privilege but it's also an obligation," said Jacobs, who is Finder's legacy partner.

Jacobs, who lives in Peabody, grew up in Houston, lived in Israel, and has taught in Hebrew schools, added: "I definitely feel a strong need to do this. I feel like there's so many important lessons that we still have to learn from the Holocaust."

Finder, who first met Weitz in the Krakow ghetto when the two were just 12, says the idea of keeping her story alive helps calm her fears that Holocaust deniers - such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Roman Catholic bishop Richard Williamson - will not rewrite history.

"I would say next to my family probably right now, this is the most important thing that I can imagine that would really help to carry the message," said Finder.

Like Weitz, she wants people to know that they can take action to right a wrong. "My message is that every one of us is responsible for each other. And each and every one of us has the power to make changes," said Finder. "You cannot stand by and be indifferent when you see things immoral and injustice around you. You have to speak up."

Steven Rosenberg can be reached at srosenberg@globe.com.