LEOMINSTER -- Six white candles stood for the six million people killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The slaughter lasted 10 years.
The six candles were lit by survivors of the Nazi regime or their families. Children and adults watched quietly.
The Holocaust cannot be allowed to become a footnote, said Rabbi Alan M. Alpert, during the Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) program at the Congregation Agudat Achim in Leominster. Holocaust Remembrance Day began Sunday night and will end 24 hours later.
Alpert said people today have to pass the information on to their children, so that those children can pass it to their own children.
The camps were liberated nearly 70 years ago during World War II and new information is still found every day, he said.
Helga "Sunnie" Epstein and her family escaped to England from Cologne, Germany in 1939, after the Nazis began actions against the Jews, but before they invaded Poland. The 16-year-old girl attended school during the six months the family was in England.
She knows she was one of the fortunate ones. She and her family soon immigrated to the United States to begin a new life.
Carol (Frymerman) Sojcher was remembered by her son, Stuart Sojcher. The Polish teenager spent four years in the Nazi death camps. When she was liberated from Auschwitz, she weighed 45 pounds.
Carol Sojcher fulfilled the request of the women who gave her enough crumbs to survive. "Please tell our stories," they asked her.
After arriving in the United States, the survivor, who had a great sense of humor, according to her son, did as her saviors asked. She participated in Holocaust programs and shared her stories in the newspaper. Carol Sojcher died two years ago.
"It's just an emotional day," Stuart Sojcher said.
Some lit candles in memory of family members who have died and for family they had never met, people who did not survive the Nazis.
Sarah Cushman, the academic program liaison officer for Holocaust and genocide studies at Clark University who earned her doctorate at Clark, spoke about the women in Auschwitz and the surrounding camps.
The prisoners endured starvation, disease and brutality during the attempted annihilation of European Jewry, she said.
Those who were not sent to the gas chambers faced daily threats of filth, overcrowding and violence.
Some women formed communities and watched out for each other and even made plans on how to avoid a second Auschwitz.
Those who survived and were liberated faced further challenges. Often they had few if any relatives, had no guidance and did not want to remain in Europe. Remembering the camps and those who perished became an important part of their lives.
The female camps were often run by women. "All women guards contributed to genocide," Cushman said.
They selected women to send to the gas chambers and even beat some of the prisoners to death.
After the talk, each member of the congregation carried a lit candle to join the six memorial candles at the front of the synagogue as the rabbi and congregation member Ellen Lawlor sang.
The remembrance ended with a mourners' prayer, traditional Hebrew alternating with the names of the death camps and other sites of slaughter.