NEW YORK – Kehila Kedosha Janina (the Holy Community of Janina) on Broome Street in Manhattan, the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, held its annual Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony on Sunday, April 23. The event included a candle-lighting in honor of the 6 million Jews who perished in the death camps and a presentation by Rebecca Yomtov Hauser, a survivor who spoke about her experience in Ioannina during the Holocaust.
Rebecca Yomtov Hauser, 95 years old, was deported from Ioannina on March 25, 1944. She came from a typical Yanniote family of shop owners and lived outside the Kastro in Ioannina with her family including her parents, Mordo and Boneka, and her four siblings. Her sister Annetta died before the war, but her brothers Nissim, Avraam and Isaac, along with their parents, were murdered in the concentration camps. After the war, family in the United States brought Rebecca to the USA.
As noted on the Kehila Kedosha Janina website, Rebecca has spoken numerous times on the Holocaust, feeling it to be of the utmost importance to educate and ensure that this never happens again. In 2016, she published her memoir, My Simple Life in Greece, Destroyed by the Holocaust.
At the start of World War II there were 2,000 Greek Jews living in Ioannina. Of the 1,960 deported, 1,850 perished in the Nazi death camps. “We all remember, but the survivors never forget,” said Ed Hauser, Rebecca’s son.
The event was an emotional experience for those present. Among those in attendance were Kehila Kedosha Janina Museum Director Marcia Ikonomopoulos and Consul of Greece in New York Manos Koubarakis.
Responding to a question from Ikonomopoulos, Rebecca said, “In the beginning I survived, there was a hope that my three brothers would survive. When I came by here [in the United States], I was sorry that I survived but with the help of everyone around I was able to have a wonderful family in America, that they opened their arms and their hearts, to me and I more or less realized that as I am alive, I will stay alive.”
She observed, “The pain of the Holocaust is a pain which is hidden, but which never goes away.”
One woman present at the event, Susan Holiday, introduced herself and explained that her husband “was Martin Holiday, son of Jack Yomtov, the family that Rebecca came to live with when she came from Greece.”
“I am very thankful for them, they are a wonderful family, they made my life,” Rebecca said.
As noted on the website, the Kehila Kedosha Janina congregation was first organized in New York in 1906 by Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews from the city of Ioannina in Northwestern Greece. In the early twentieth century there were hundreds of other synagogues on the Lower East Side that served Ashkenazi Yiddish-speaking Jews or Sephardic Spanish-speaking Jews. Needing a place of their own where they could preserve their unique traditions, customs, liturgy, and language, the congregation purchased property at 280 Broome Street and opened its doors to worship at its current location in 1927.
The synagogue is a designated New York City landmark and continues to hold services every Shabbat as well as all Jewish holidays. In addition, it houses a museum about Greek Jewry that is open to the public every Sunday, as well as by appointment. The museum serves as a repository for Romaniote and Sephardic Greek Jewish history, both in Greece and on the Lower East Side, and hosts many educational events including lectures, book signings, movie screenings, and concerts.
More information is available online at www.kkjsm.org. My Simple Life in Greece, Destroyed by the Holocaust by Rebecca Yomtov Hauser is available online at www.lulu.com.
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