By Murray Farber
Murray Farber is a retired reporter and editor who lives in Fresno.
The crazy declarations coming out of Iran reinforce our obligation to never forget the Holocaust. It prompted me to think back over the years and reflect on a Jew named Lipman.
In 1939, he was studying at a seminary in Poland when the Germans invaded, seized him and sent him to Buchenwald as a slave laborer. In December of 1942, this young Orthodox Jew was forced to sing Christmas carols to the cheers of German soldiers who rewarded him with food for his barracks.
Some months later, Lipman was among Jews being loaded onto a truck when a soldier recognized him and remembered the Jew with the tenor voice. The soldier conferred with an officer and they ordered Lipman back to the barracks.
None of the Jews aboard the truck ever returned.
As editor of my newspaper’s religion page in 1957, I met Lipman when he came to the New Jersey community where I worked. His arm was tattooed by the Nazis with the number F6580. He arrived to serve as the cantor of the local synagogue’s high holiday services.
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