Survivors receive honorary degrees at RVCC

By Seth Mandel

After helping to save a Jewish man during the Holocaust, serving in the U.S. Air Force, and educating students about genocide for the last 17 years, there isn't much Edmund Palagyi hasn't accomplished.

That list got even shorter after Palagyi and 10 other Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and liberators received honorary degree certificates at the Raritan Valley Community College spring commencement May 16.

"This is a great honor," Palagyi said. "This is something precious to me. Finally, I reached a point where I wore a cap and gown. So I'm proud of this."

Palagyi and fellow rescuer Christopher Christodoulo, liberator Milton Gottlieb, and survivors Maud Dahme, Margit Feldman, Tova Friedman, Renee Kuker, Ursula Pawel, Robert Wagemann, and Sara and David Schwarzberg were all honored with the "certificate of leadership in Holocaust and genocide studies, for extraordinary achievements in promoting tolerance, understanding and compassion in order to build a better world for future generations."

"I think it was outstanding, and finally in my life at the age of 77, I felt what it's like to put on the graduation cap and gown," said Feldman, who was instrumental in the establishment of the college's highly regarded and well attended "Learning Through Experience" program more than 25 years ago.

College President Dr. Casey Crabill called up the certificate recipients one by one after thanking them for their accomplishments and contributions to Holocaust education. Feldman, whose husband, Harvey, as well as her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons were in the audience, was moved to tears by the ceremony.

"It's a great accomplishment for all survivors and liberators and the righteous gentile who was there, to be recognized; not that we need the recognition, but it shows the world that after what we've been through, we accomplished a lot afterwards," Feldman said.

She added that through the ceremony, the college was providing yet another service to the other 320-plus graduates — an opportunity for perspective, to demonstrate the power of their own achievements as college graduates.

"The students who were graduating, I hope realized what an outstanding accomplishment they also received… from their graduation," Feldman said.

Several weeks ago, all the honorees received a letter from Sara and David Schwarzberg's daughter Peppy Margolis, the college's Program Manager, Cultural Outreach, notifying them of the college's desire to award them the certificates.

"I was honored when I received the letter," Dahme said. "I was surprised, I had no idea."

Dahme was unable to attend the ceremony, but she won't be receiving another letter this time — Crabill wants to personally hand her the certificate.

Dahme is a former president of the New Jersey Board of Education, and was the subject of a recent NJN documentary, "The Hidden Child." She and her sister were two of the estimated 3,000 to 8,000 Jewish children in the Netherlands who were hidden and saved during the Holocaust by righteous gentiles.

Dahme currently speaks about her experiences and about the prevention of hatred and genocide to schools as well as adult groups.

"I think it's very important to share my story about the genocide, because genocide continues today, so that they begin to understand what it's like," Dahme said. "And I also talk about the caring and the love that people gave my sister and I, because we were hidden together, by two different families."

That compassion is integral to the lesson, Dahme said. It's important for her audiences to understand the good that people can accomplish, even during such dark times.

"I teach them about caring about each other," Dahme said. "I try to be positive about something very negative in my life. I don't talk about any atrocities. I saw a lot of things happen to my sister and myself, but I feel that our youth see so much violence already, whether it's on TV or where they live, in films, that I try to be very positive and not talk about that."

Friedman, the executive director of the Jewish Family Service of Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren Counties, was honored April 29 at the organization's annual Gala Dinner Dance for her 20 years of work at JFS.

"It was really something; it's a great month," Friedman said, adding that in addition to the general commencement, the college provided a reception before and after the honorees received their certificates. "The ceremony was very touching."

Friedman said that among the reasons administrators gave for the certificates were all their Holocaust-related education efforts, as well as the fact that many of them never finished their education because of the war.

"I was honored; I was very honored that they thought that our work was worthy," Friedman said. "I just want to thank the school for being so sensitive and for giving us such a nice honor. Because it was very, very nice of them, to put us together with all their graduates."

Palagyi's story is a heroic nail-biter. It is contained on 586 pages that Palagyi has written — so far — and begins when he was a boy in a Hungarian village during the war.

The first time his family tried to save a Jew was when a Jewish mother, hoping to save her baby, gave the child to Palagyi's mother. But a Nazi soldier saw the transfer, and the child was taken.

The second occurred when the Nazis attempted to arrest an elderly Jewish lady in the village. The entire village attempted to blockade the German truck with their bodies, but when the soldiers began to aim their machine guns at the villagers, the Jewish woman begged the villagers to let the Germans take her, lest they all be shot.

But the third time, they succeeded. Late at night and early in the morning, Palagyi and his family — aside from his father, who was serving in the military — would hear creaking in the floor of the hayloft above. Palagyi's grandfather knew immediately that someone was hiding there at night.

He was right; Palagyi's grandfather hid in the outhouse early one morning and recognized the long peot (sideburns) of the young Jewish man. It was Palagyi's responsibility to take food up to the hayloft when the man wasn't there to make sure he was fed and knew that he was welcome to continue hiding in the hayloft.

A couple of weeks later, the Jewish man disappeared. After the war, Palagyi's family moved to the U.S. Years later, they received a letter from an Israeli man who said he was a cook aboard a ship that would be docking soon in New York City. The man wrote that he had information about the Palagyi's relatives who had remained in the village, which, after the redrawing of the borders, became part of Slovakia in the reconstituted Czechoslovakia.

The man arrived at the Palagyi's home, and when the Palagyi's admitted they did not know or recognize him, the man said: "Think back to 1944 in your village. I was the one hiding in your hayloft."

The man had not only survived the war, but went back to the Palagyi's village to express his gratitude. Though by that time the Palagyis had left, the man met, fell in love with, and married a woman from the village. It was through his wife's family that he was able to track down the Palagyis.

"I went back to your village," the man told them, "because I made a promise to myself. I promised myself that if I should live through this war, whatever it would take, I would find you and thank you personally for trying to help me during my time of need."

Through his local minister, who then got him in touch with a rabbi in Hillsborough in 1990, and then eventually a professor at Raritan Valley, Palagyi began speaking about his story and the dangers of hate.

"Unfortunately, we haven't really learned anything," Palagyi said. "We still have hatred, we still have all sorts of crimes against our brothers and sisters. We're all children of God, but I guess there are more of those who feel they are not. And that's unfortunate."

But Palagyi is undeterred, and has no intention of curbing his speaking engagements.

"I'm not planning on stopping unless the Lord has different plans for me," Palagyi said. "But if I'm still able, I don't care if I'm 126, I'll still do it."