Temple Emanuel celebrates 20th anniversary of its Holocaust Memorial Garden
"Why is a Holocaust memorial garden pertinent today? Because if we don’t remember, who will,” he asked.
Gardens held a special place in the life of Marga Silbermann Randall.
After the Nazis had taken everything from her family, she would visit gardens near her small town in Germany with her grandfather, she recounted in a 2004 interview with Doug Oster for WQED’s OnQ Magazine.
The shadow of the Holocaust hung heavy over Randall’s early years.
After enduring Kristallnacht, her family went into hiding in Berlin. One day, her father received a phone call that the Nazis were coming to arrest him. The patriarch hung up the phone, had a heart attack and died.
One of the last families to leave Germany in 1941, Randall, her mother and sister escaped first to Paris, then Spain and Portugal before arriving in New York and eventually settling in Pittsburgh.
Randall moved to the South Hills after first living in Squirrel Hill. She married Jordan Randall, raised a family and became a member of Temple Emanuel of South Hills.
A 1981 trip to Germany inspired her to devote her life to Holocaust education. She spoke in Europe and locally about her experiences. She was honored by Seton Hill University for her work in Jewish/ Christian interfaith relations.
The gardens she visited with grandfather, though, were never far from her mind. When Temple Emanuel began a renovation in 2003 that included a courtyard, she saw an opportunity to create a living memorial to the Shoah.
What Randall established in 2004 was more than a simple flower and plant bed that people passed on their way into the building. Included among the various flora are two benches, one inscribed with the word “Remember” in English, the other with “Zakhor” in Hebrew.
Between the two benches is a plaque designating the place where ashes collected by Randall from Auschwitz-Birkenau are buried.
Another large stone is etched with a Star of David and the names of the large concentration and death camps that existed during World War II.
Randall died in 2005, a year after the Holocaust Memorial Garden was started at the synagogue.
On Sept. 6, in the hours approaching Shabbat, members of Temple Emanuel, along with Randall’s family, commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Holocaust Memorial Garden.
Temple Emanuel’s Rabbi Aaron Meyer opened the program, invoking the often-repeated Jewish concept that “we are a people in whom the past endures, in whom the present is inconceivable without moments gone by.”
The evening, he said, was a mix of melancholy and gratitude, remembering those who made the garden possible. He noted the numerous temple events that took place in and around the garden.
Acknowledging the waning sun shining in the courtyard, Rabbi Emeritus Mark Mahler recalled the outdoor Shabbat services of the past hosted with the garden as a backdrop.
Mahler, who was Temple Emanuel’s senior rabbi when the garden was created, recounted Randall’s biography and acknowledged the contribution of Lynn Rubin, who he said was the “tender and keeper” of the garden.
It was Rubin who selected each type of flower in the garden and worked to maintain it, with a dedicated group of volunteers, over the last two decades.
Mahler said that it was Randall’s mission to ensure the Holocaust not be forgotten.
“Marga, you have fulfilled your mission,” he concluded.
Beth El Congregation of the South Hills Rabbi Alex Greenbaum spoke of why a garden in the South Hills had meaning.
“Remembering the Holocaust may start with us, but it doesn’t end with us,” he said. “We are still here and simply surviving is not the goal. It is a means to an end. We survive to thrive.”
Greenbaum told those in attendance that there is no such thing as an innocent bystander.
“If we are standing by, then we are guilty. Why is a Holocaust memorial garden pertinent today? Because if we don’t remember, who will?” he asked.
When Rubin took the podium, she thanked the volunteers who helped create and maintain the garden.
“There have been so many people who played such an important role,” she said. “This Is not just one person or group.”
Rubin explained the deep symbolism of all of the flowers and plants in the garden.
Flowers with bright red blooms represent power and military, deep red blooms the blood of the Shoah’s victims. White flowers stand for freedom and survival, yellow hope and pink rebirth.
Forget-me-nots remind visitors to never forget while bleeding heart plants recall the heartbreak of the Holocaust. Red sage, in straight vertical lines, represent prison bars and soldiers. Dusty millers symbolize those who protected Jews, while evergreen shrubs recall the trees used as cover by those able to escape the Nazis’ atrocities.
Interspersed throughout the garden, Rubin explained, are sweet potato vines.
“They are symbolic of the potato peels that the concentration camp survivors managed to dig and scrounge out of the Nazi garbage pits and, by eating those peels, stayed alive,” she said.
Recalling when Randall traveled to Germany and brought back ashes, Rubin said, there was never a question that the garden progenitor wouldn’t complete her mission.
“She never took no for an answer,” Rubin said. “Marga took her garden trowel and some Ziploc bags and went to Auschwitz. She proceeded to dig up the ash pit and put the soil in the Ziploc bags and slipped it into her purse. No one in customs said anything, no one questioned her.”
Noting the significance of Randall’s work and the Holocaust Memorial Garden, Meyer recited words from the Babylonian Talmud.
“Today, know upon whose shoulders you stand,” he said. “We each stand on the shoulders of giants, for today, in this place of memory, we ensure that we will never forget.” PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsurghjewishchronicle.org.
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