'I didn't want to be a Jew': NJ woman survived Holocaust through parents who hid identity

HOWELL - It was soon after Ruth Millman first moved to the United States from Poland in 1949 that she found out she was Jewish.

To survive the Holocaust, her mother arranged a fake marriage with a Christian man, while her father remained hidden in the basement of a Christian family that offered him refuge. She went to church every day, sang in the choir and wore rosary beads.

Her parents maneuvered to flee danger, and Millman endured months of hunger and no assurance she would wake up alive the next day. Eventually, after the war was over, the family moved to the U.S. when she was 10.

“I didn’t want to be a Jew,” she said, remembering her confusion as a 10-year-old girl who was thought to be Christian and had seen atrocities endured by Jewish people in Europe. She then discovered that everybody else in her family had been murdered by the Nazis.

Millman, a proud New Jerseyan who served on the New Jersey Holocaust and Hate Crime Commission and was founder of the Jewish Federation for Greater Monmouth County, was the speaker at the Holocaust remembrance event held at Congregation Ahavat Olam in Howell Monday.

The event, co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Ocean County, and area synagogues Beth Am Shalom, Temple Beth Or and B’nai Israel, had over 150 attendees who gathered to commemorate Yom Ha-Shoah, the international Holocaust remembrance day.

With antisemitism gaining popularity around the globe, Millman made a call to not forget the Holocaust and asked the youth to get involve in anti-hate initiatives so that it doesn’t happen again.

“Antisemitism is worse right now than it used to be before the Second World War,” she argued.

Before moving to the U.S., she lived through severe hunger in the Warsaw ghetto, where Jewish families were confined before being taken to concentration camps, where over 6 million Jewish people were killed.

In the ghetto, a typical dinner would be a cup of water and some bread that she would eat while nauseated by the odor of multiple dead bodies lying around.

She saw her grandfather board a train on what she now knows was a trip to Auschwitz, a German-occupied city in Poland known to have hosted the largest Nazi labor and extermination complex. And in a matter of time, most of her family were murdered. But at that time, she thought her family had simply been taken to a different ghetto where there was more food.

The behaviors that lead to such crimes as the Holocaust can be seen here, said Rabbi David Amar of Congregation Ahavat Olam, who moderated the event. “Genocide is not something foreign,” he said.

Every day we see instances that parallel practices in our society and the Holocaust, said Amar. “Every time a kid is bullied in school and we let it happen, that’s the beginning of something,” he said.

As Amar praised the many people who stood up for the Jews during the genocide, he also brought up the role passive bystanders played during the Holocaust.

“That’s why I always say that the Holocaust teaches us to stand up for the weakest link,” he added. “Love your neighbor, like you love yourself. That’s what I always preach."

The event ended with a short speech from Ocean County Commissioner Joe Vicari, who showed the audience a proclamation from his fellow commissioners declaring the importance of remembering the Holocaust.

“The history of the Holocaust offers an opportunity to reflect on the moral responsibilities of individual, societies and governments,” reads the proclamation.

In tune with Millman, Vicari encouraged young people to get involved and to remain vigilant against hatred and persecution.

Juan Carlos Castillo is a reporter covering everything Lakewood. He delves into politics, social issues and human-interest stories. Reach out to him at JcCastillo@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Holocaust remembrance marked in Howell NJ with tale of hidden identity