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Charlotte Joachimsthal, of Boynton Beach, left, hugs her sister's cousin Mali Goldfinger Janower (the sole holocaust survivor of her immediate family) during a Cafe Europa Holocaust reunion at Temple Beth Tikvah in Greenacres
Tuesday afternoon. They had not seen each other in two years. Cafe Europa is a concept that arosse in Europe following the end of the Holocaust years when Jewish survivors began their search to find someone, anyone from their families or their hometowns that had also survived.
GREENACRES — Their numbers are dwindling every year. Some of their bodies are ailing and some are troubled by painful memories almost beyond imagination. But the hundreds of Holocaust survivors who gathered in Greenacres this afternoon have a message for the rest of the world.
"We are still here. We are strong. We survived," said Colette Herman, one of an estimated 300 Holocaust survivors who showed up for the annual Cafe Europa luncheon, held this year at Temple Beth Tikvah.
This was the fifth annual Cafe Europa event organized by the Ferd & Gladys Alpert Jewish Family & Children's Service group in West Palm Beach. Jenni Frumer, the associate executive director, said the name comes from the fact that after World War II, Jewish survivors often left notes at coffeehouses and cafes trying to find their separated family members.
"Now this is their way of finding each other again," Frumer said. "It's kind of their time to eat and schmooze."
Survivors at the event, such as 85-year-old Madeline Berman of Boynton Beach, were full of memories and stories.
She talked about how after the Nazis imprisoned her family in Hungary she lived in seven different concentration camps, including being forced to escort other Jews from the barracks to the crematorium in Auschwitz and being forced into a cattle car. She talked about the day another prisoner came running, saying they had been liberated by American troops.
"We thought he had gone crazy, which was common. Then we saw he had a little pack of cigarettes that said 'Camel' on it," Berman said.
Berman said getting over what they endured is still hard for survivors because "at night the memories come back like a movie."
But Colette Herman, who was born in a camp in France in 1940 after her pregnant mother was captured in Belgium, said the point of Cafe Europa is to remember that they are still alive more than the bad memories.
"Grim things come along without looking for them," Herman said. "It is a great thing they do here because it is a happy occasion and it gives you love."
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