Survival legacy: Holocaust group considers LV for 2003 convention

Wednesday, June 6, 2001 | 10:51 a.m.

The places where Ben Lesser grew up had names that today still send shivers up the spines of thousands of survivors of one of the worst purges in the history of mankind.

Lesser's formative years were spent at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau -- three of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps where an estimated 3 million Jews were killed during Adolf Hitler's reign of terror.

"When we were liberated at Dachau, I was 16 and little more than skin and bones," said Lesser, who at 72 appears trim and healthy but still suffers recurring nightmares, seeing the faces of his mother, father, sister, brother and others who did not survive.

Lesser says he tells and retells the terrible horror he endured because the world should never forget the Holocaust. He was on hand Tuesday night at Temple Beth Sholom in Summerlin when fellow Polish-born American citizen and Holocaust survivor Benjamin Meed announced that Las Vegas is in line as a potential host for the eighth international Holocaust survivors convention in 2003.

"This convention would be important for us in the Jewish community because survival is part of our legacy. We have a message about survival to tell the world," Lesser said. The son of a wine and syrup factory owner, Lesser lost all of his family but one sister in the death camps.

Meed, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in Washington, D.C., since 1979, said that while Las Vegas is one of "many, many" cities to be considered he is "more enthusiastic" about the city's chances after seeing "the very impressive facilities."

"I do not have a decision to announce yet, but Las Vegas is one of the possibilities that will be determined by a larger group," said Meed, a New York resident. "Las Vegas has a Jewish community that has a broad understanding for this event that will bring thousands of people here."

Past Holocaust conventions in cities including New York, Miami and Philadelphia have drawn 6,000 to 15,000 participants since the first gathering in Israel in 1981.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar said such a convention here would be "a living monument to history."

"This shows Las Vegas has matured to the point where the organizers would consider the city for such a serious convention," Goodman said. "Our city would offer a background for the visitors to enjoy themselves but this would not be a joyous ocassion. It would be a solemn one."

Henry Schuster, who with is wife, Anita, is co-founder and co-president of the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada, said bringing this event to Las Vegas would culminate a longtime dream.

"Because so many of us are getting older, this could be our last harrah -- our last national gathering," Schuster said. "This convention would be a chance for us to pass on the message to second and third generations of survivors to carry on, and never let the world forget."

Schuster, 75, was raised in Germany and remembered when edicts were passed, ordering that debts owed to Jews no longer had to be paid.

"We were forced to live in our attic, and that did not last long," Schuster said. "We saw what was coming and my family sent me to France in 1941. From there I was sent to Spain then Portugal."

Schuster and one of his sisters survived. All other members of his family were killed by the Nazis.

Gina Klonoff, the daughter of an Austrian synagogue cantor, also was able to flee the country after surviving Krystalnacht on Nov. 10, 1938 -- the night that the German government encouraged rioters to smash and burn synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses and one of the first major events of the Holocaust.

"We were trapped like animals, but my father was able to send me and my mother to England," Klonoff said. "He remained behind and hid from the Germans. He got out on the last train one day before war was declared. Had he not, we may never have seen him again."

Today, Klonoff, 74, assigns inspirational Holocaust survivor speakers to Clark County School District classes to teach youngsters about the shocking realities of death camp life. Konloff said, for her, a national convention in Las Vegas would help close longstanding wounds.

"When we were trapped in Austria we had two feelings -- certain death, for one, but also abandonment," she said. "What a lot of people don't remember is that very few civilized countries would accept us. So many Jews who tried to get out early could not and, as a result, were killed.

"A convention here would give many of us a chance to tell our stories to a world that now wants to learn what really happened. But also it allows us to keep alive the memories of our brothers, sisters, cousins and others who met such a horrible fate."

Klonoff and Lesser, like Schuster, are members of the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada that was founded in 1995 with 35 members and has grown to more than 200.

Schuster said that the organization works closely with Jewish Family Services to help pay the hospital and utility bills of Holocaust survivors who run into financial difficulties.

"We are here for the survivors," Schuster said.