Annual countywide Yom HaShoah Commemoration held in White Plains
This year's event welcomed Holocaust survivor Joseph Gosler to recollect the everlasting impacts.
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More than eight decades after the Holocaust, Westchester County held its 34th annual Yom HaShoah Commemoration on Tuesday at the Garden of Remembrance.
This year's event welcomed Holocaust survivor Joseph Gosler to recollect the everlasting impacts.
Since 1992, the annual event has taken place at the Garden of Remembrance in White Plains. The garden and its gates were established to memorialize and honor the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust.
"The impact of war, abandonment and forced migration forced a sense of victimhood which took me many decades to overcome," said Gosler.
At only 7 months old in 1942, Gosler's parents entrusted a nursing student from the Dutch resistance in an effort to protect Gosler and the family. He became a hidden child in the war and was brought into a Protestant family under a new identity.
Three years after the end of World War II, Gosler was reunited with his parents through American Red Cross records.
"Who were these people that called themselves my parents? I was angry and confused. Abandoned 7 months by my birth parents...now abandoned once more by my wartime parents," he said.
He, like many others, took time at the event to compare the past to present-day events.
"Even in paradise, it seems there are clouds. It embarrasses and pains me how migrants are treated today. It reminds me of 1938 Germany when stateless, Polish jews were detained and deported," said Gosler.
The free event was open to the public, with an estimated 400 people in attendance.
Attendees were also invited to bring their own shofar to participate in the first-ever county wide shofar gathering.
