Community Corner

Holocaust Survivor Sponsors Torah Scroll; Celebration Sunday

Marge Lanxner Fettman and her husband Daniel, who died in 2004, both survived the Holocaust, but their parents did not. She's sponsoring the creation of a sacred object, and the public is invited to celebrate at Seneca Park.


As the years pass, fewer Holocaust survivors remain to give a first-person account of those tragic times.

So Rabbi Yochanan Posner was surprised recently when an older woman, Marge Lanxner Fettman, who had survived the Holocaust as a young adult, called to say she wanted to sponsor a Torah scroll in memory of her husband, who survived the Holocaust but passed on in 2004, as well as both sets of their parents, who had died in the Holocaust.  

“I was really touched,” says Posner, events and education director of Skokie Chabad.

“Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust,... this is a special way to remember—and above all honor ... these special lives that were cut short.”

Next Sunday, the public is welcome to help Fettman and Skokie Chabad celebrate the new Torah with a ceremony and children's crafts and activities in Seneca Park, at Keystone south of Dempster, at 10:30 a.m., then the parading of the new Torah into the synagogue, at 4059 Dempster, and a celebratory brunch at 11:30 a.m.

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"In spite of the sadness, it will be a joyous event with singing, dancing, as it is a celebration of life," said Menachem Posner, Rabbi Yochanan's brother.

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Surviving Dr. Mengele; Marge's story

The story of the new scroll really begins with Marge Fettman (then Lanxner), who lived with her parents and siblings in the Romanian town of Szaszregen when the Nazis herded the Jews into a Ghetto in the spring of 1944. They were soon put on cattle cars bound for Auschwitz.

“When we arrived, Dr. Mengele stood there flicking his whip, sending some of us to the right and others to the left. I was separated from my family. Since I had the snacks we had packed for the children, I was concerned that they would be hungry. I wanted to bolt to the other side to be with them, but Mengele saw and shouted at me in German, ‘Are you a fool?’ I stayed where I was and my life was spared.”

Rebuilding their lives

Marge survived the war and married Daniel Fettman, a fellow survivor, in 1946. They immigrated to the US in 1949, and rebuilt their lives together. They had both lost their parents and a number of siblings, but they were determined to create a future that would make their parents proud. Daniel founded a successful chain of grocery stores, and they raised their children with the Jewish traditions they had learned in their youth.

To honor their memory

After Daniel passed away in 2004 at age 83, Marge wanted to do something special to honor his memory and that of their parents. Since their parents had been very religious Jews, she resolved to commission a Torah scroll, the basic text of Judaism, to perpetuate their legacy.

“She wanted the Torah to be used to teach Judaism and Jewish traditions to the next generation,” says Yochanan Posner, “so she decided to house it at Lubavitch Chabad, which is known for bring on frontier of Jewish education and outreach to all people regardless of affiliation and prior experience.”

Torah Scroll is sacred

A Torah scroll, which contains the Five Books of Moses, is the most sacred object in Judaism. An authentic handwritten parchment scroll can take up to a year to craft. It is then stored in the ark in the front of the synagogue and read only during services.

"It is treated almost as if it were human," said Menachem Posner. 

In 1980s, survivors were plentiful in Skokie

Rabbi Yochanan Posner recalled that while he was growing up in Skokie in the 1980’s, it seemed that most of the older people spoke with European accents and many of them had numbers on their arms.

“Even if the Holocaust was not often spoken about, you just knew it. No one would dream of buying a German car,” he said.

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At one point, one in every six residents of Skokie was either a survivor or a relative of a survivor, Posner said. That led to the still-remembered 1977 attempt by Neo-Nazis to march in town, which provoked a firestorm of debate, litigation and raw emotions.

“The Holocaust was present in the synagogue as well,” Yochanan Posner recalled. 

“People sponsored plaques in memory of their loved one, often missing the date of passing, since no one knew when they succumbed to the Nazi war machine. And days when Yizkor, the memorial prayers, were said, were especially poignant as people remembered and paid tribute to entire communities that vanished in the inferno.

“There are still many survivors today, but they are fewer and farther between," he said. 

“As the Holocaust fades into the past, this may be one of the last such occasions, and everyone is invited to attend and pay tribute when we complete the Torah scroll and bring it to its new home on August 11.”

Call the synagogue office at 847-677-1770 or email info@skokiechabad.org for more information.    


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