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Survivors in South Jersey
Enjoy a Birthday Party
L SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
ouis Goldman is 85, but he
attended his first birthday party
just last week.

The Holocaust survivor living in
Vineland, New Jersey, was joined by
more than 10 other survivors for a
birthday celebration as part of the
Hope and Healing program created
by the Jewish Family and Children’s
Service of Southern New Jersey.

“I had a chance to meet with my
fellow survivors and talk about the old
times, how it was good to be alive ... I
enjoyed it,” Goldman said.

The Hope and Healing program,
which convenes about 15 Holocaust
survivors monthly to partake in yoga,
art therapy and other activities, orga-
nized the celebration in tandem with
8 Rosh Hashanah — a new year and
an opportunity to celebrate birth and
rebirth. The program is also an opportunity
to add joy and connection to the lives
of survivors.

“During some of the conversations
I’ve had with the clients, I found out
that some of them never had a birth-
day party,” said Hope and Healing
Coordinator Ronda Mathers. “A lot
of them lost their families during the
Holocaust, so they didn’t have family to
celebrate with afterwards or they didn’t
feel like celebrating afterwards.”
The birthday party, held at
Congregation Beth Israel, was attended
by about 35 guests, mostly family and
friends of the survivors, and featured
survivors singing and playing harmon-
ica, as well as cupcakes and personal-
SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Holocaust survivors attend a birthday celebration through Jewish Family and
Children’s Service of Southern New Jersey’s Hope and Healing program.




ized gift bags of apples and honey.

“Our goal is really to make sure that
they know that we care about them,
that we are there for them,” said Gail
Belfer, director of JFCS of Southern
New Jersey Holocaust Survivor Services
and Advocacy.

Hope and Healing, the program
within Holocaust Survivor Services
and Advocacy, was created about three
years ago as a way to engage with
Vineland’s approximately 20 Holocaust
survivors. Though Vineland is technically in
the geography covered by the Jewish
Federation of Cumberland County, the
Jewish Federation has no JFCS and,
therefore, lacks the resources needed
to take care of its survivor popula-
tion. JFCS of Southern New Jersey has
worked with Vineland’s Holocaust sur-
vivors for about a decade.

Before Hope and Healing, they would
send over a social worker to manage
cases. Later, they received a grant from
the Jewish Federations of North America
to help expand their person-centered,
trauma-informed care and expand pro-
grams to be offered monthly.

“It really is taking into consideration
all of the trauma, their background,
what they had gone through, in form-
ing programs that would really bring
them joy, happiness, reduce their anxi-
ety, help them cope with their negative
thoughts and help them cope with
challenges,” Belfer said.

JFCS identified Vineland’s Holocaust
survivors as particularly important
because of their isolated geography.

Vineland is almost an hour from Cherry
Hill; during the height of the pandemic,
loneliness hit those survivors hard.

“For so long during COVID, these
folks were in their homes by them-
selves,” JFCS Director of Marketing
and Communications Rachael Ovitz
said. “So it’s really only in the last
couple of months that we started doing
regular in-person programs again.”
Vineland was not always a sparse
and isolated Jewish community. In the
early 1950s, Jewish Holocaust refugees
and survivors moved to the area to
work on chicken farms.

“The Rothschilds purchased lands,
gave them help, helped them get settled
in the Vineland community, and it was
vibrant,” Belfer said.

Vineland was home to multiple syn-
agogues, kosher delis and butchers.

However, as the survivors had children,
the next generation moved away. The
Jewish institutions closed down, but
the survivors in the area stayed.

“They just don’t have the infrastruc-
ture, the network,” Belfer said. “There’s
not a large Jewish community there
anymore.” Goldman is one of the survivors
who moved to Vineland and lived on a
chicken farm. He was born in Poland
and survived the Holocaust by hiding
in a basement with his family. At one
point, he went blind in both eyes for
four months, only gaining back full
vision in one eye.

In 1949, Goldman came to the
U.S. with his family, first moving to
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before set-
tling in Vineland. Though he attended
college and worked elsewhere for 20
years, Goldman eventually returned.

Today, Goldman relies on JFCS
social workers to help him run errands,
but he also finds profound joy in the
opportunity to meet with fellow sur-
vivors. Many of them have known
each other since childhood. Now older
adults, they don’t need to share the
tales of survivors; they’re happy to
gather and just chat.

“It takes your mind off your aches
and pains,” he said. JE
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