A Hungarian couple was posthumously honored at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration for hiding a Jewish family during the Nazi occupation.
Louis and Maria Gruber were bestowed with the Righteous Among Nations Award from Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial authority. Their children, who live in the Los Angeles area, accepted the award on behalf of their parents Thursday from Israeli Consul General David Siegel.
In late October 1944, as thousands of Hungarian Jews were being sent to concentration camps, the Grubers took their close friends, the Spitz family, to a basement factory in their building in Budapest and created a secret apartment in the storage areas.
“They were able to hide us in such a way that even their children did not know we were there,” said Luis Spitz, who now lives in the Chicago area.
The commemoration at the Museum of Tolerance of what is known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah also included recognition of World War II veterans, including those who fled Nazi Germany and joined the U.S. armed forces, and a ribbon cutting for “Memory Reconstruction,” an installation by artist Lori Shocket and 129 Holocaust survivors.
“Yom HaShoah is a day to reaffirm our responsibilities to ourselves and future generations,” President Barack Obama said in a statement. “It is incumbent upon us to make real those timeless words, ‘Never forget. Never again.’
“Yet, even as we recognize that mankind is capable of unspeakable acts of evil, we also draw strength from the survivors, the liberators, and the righteous among nations who represented humanity at its best.
“With their example to guide us, together we must firmly and forcefully condemn the anti-Semitism that is still far too common today. Together we must stand against bigotry and hatred in all their forms. And together, we can leave our children a world that is more just, more free, and more secure for all humankind.”
—City News Service