Thursday, July 10, 2025
For eight Long Island residents, the stories of surviving the Holocaust remain just as vivid over eight decades later.
Those heroic men and women visited the Kennedy High School library on May 29 to speak to approximately 35 students about experiences during World War II, how they emigrated to the United States, and the antisemitism that still plagues society today.
The survivors who participated included Bella Rosenberg, Gerson Alon, Livia Horovitz, Hedy Page, long-time married couple Sonia and Harry Hochman, and Lea Mlawer.
The event was orchestrated by Kennedy’s Community Leadership program led by juniors Lucas Rich and Oren Kichel, under the direction of leadership teacher Brad Seidman, in conjunction with the Westbury-based Selfhelp Community Services’ Holocaust Survivor Program.
According to Selfhelp, antisemetic incidents have skyrocketed 344 percent over the last five years and one in five young Americans believe that the Holocaust is a myth.
A similar event was held at the school last year that focused on writing letters to Congress in hopes of getting the events of the Holocaust added to school curriculums.
“I really became interested in antisemitism because of my Jewish background,” Rich said. “I felt very powerful about seeing how Jewish people around the world are being attacked. We started with an Instagram account to show all of these antisemetic events around the world and give strategies to deal with antisemitism. To continue along with that, we decided why not hold an event here similar to the one we held last year with a roundtable discussion with several Holocaust survivors to speak about the importance of countering antisemitism today.”
After being introduced by Rich and Kichel, the survivors met in individual groups of about five students each to talk about their stories. Harry Hochman spoke about how his brother and father were executed during the Holocaust and helping his two sisters to get to safety. Horovitz described the conditions of the 10 different concentration camps she found herself in, and Mlawer told her group about emigrating from Poland to Brooklyn after the Holocaust and learning English well enough to eventually attend college in the borough.
“It means an awful lot because I want those children to know what Jewish people had to go through,” Sonia Hochman said.
Reactions from the students ranged from shock and sadness to solace and a little laughter when small jokes provided a much-needed comedy relief.
Senior Arielle Polk was in the group with Horovitz and was greatly impacted by her story.
“She reminded of my own grandmother,” she said. “She told us about her experiences in the camps that she had been to and she told us stories about how every single morning, no matter the weather, they would come outside and they had to raise their arms above their heads and if they dropped their arms, even a little bit, they would be hit. It was horrible hearing about it because her and her friends still suffer from this.”
For Alon, however, the event was bittersweet. His wife Shirley attended last year’s event at Kennedy, but passed away last September after being together for 70 years. Alon got emotional as he remembered his long-time companion, but also realized that he needed to attend these events in her honor.
“I always came to these things because I feel that I have something to share, something to talk to the kids about,” he said. “And I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth, it was always my wife that was pushing me to do these things, but I sort of liked it and when I heard there’s a thing going on today, I got to go there because my wife is not around anymore.”
