(L-R) Members of the Yonkers City Council (Majority Leader Mike Sabatino; Shanae Williams; Corazon Pineda-Isaac; Council President Mike Khader; Minority Leader Mike Breen; Anthony Merante; and John Rubbo) honor (front) Holocaust survivor Betty Migdol, a Yonkers resident since 1970, with her daughter June Hirsh, with her Rabbi, Chabad of Yonkers Rabbi Mendy Hurwitz, honor Migdol at the Yonkers City Hall ceremony.
By Robert Kalfus
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yonkers resident and holocaust survivor Betty Migdol was recently honored by the Yonkers City Council, and President Mike Khader who remarked that “Betty Migdol worked at the Alexandor’s and the Caldor stores on Yonkers Avenue, which are long gone, but Betty Migdol is still among us.”
The City Council and Khader honored Migdol with proclamations and a standing ovation, as her daughter June Hirsch accompanied her at the council’s fourth floor chamber. Migdol was born Dec. 19,1927, the third of six children, to a religious and poor family in Ruscova, Romania, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains.
Migdol was smart but lacked a formal education. Her job at home was to care for her three younger siblings, who loved her greatly. In 1944, when she was 16, the Hungarians who had moved into her town rounded up all the Jews and sent them first to a ghetto and then on transport trains to the Auschwitz death camp. After six months at Auschwitz, she was sent to a slave labor camp.
When the war ended in 1945, Migdol fled from the Russian soldiers who were cruel to young girls, and was able to make her way home, where in Ruscova, she found out that any other family members who were sent to concentration camps died. Migdol’s older brother and sister also survived, because they never were sent to the ghetto and Auschwitz. Orphaned and seeing that there was nothing left for her in Ruscova, she went with three of her surviving cousins to a displaced persons camp in Germany, where she stayed for 16 months.
In 1947, she was able to cross the Atlantic Ocean to come to New York, where her new life began. A few weeks later she met Harry Migdol and they married in 1949, had two daughters, and owned a business. Incredibly, she put the horrors of her teenage years behind her, and kept her love for the Jewish religion.
The Migdols moved to Yonkers in 1970 and she worked in Alexander’s and Caldors. She now has five grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren – with more to come. She made a beautiful life for herself and others. Migdol said she is proud that Judaism has not only survived, but continued to grow in her family and with all who know her. Migdol has long been a member and supporter of Chabad of Yonkers.
She is the matriarch of her family and a great role model for the community, instilling such a strong sense of Jewish pride in her children and grandchildren, that her great-grand children attend a Chabad pre-school program – schooling that was denied to her. Every year during the Holiday of Shavuos (the holiday that commemorates the Giving of the Torah), Migdol sponsors a Kiddush luncheon in loving memory of her dear family members that perished in the Holocaust. Although it is now difficult for Migdol to walk to synagogue, she continues to sponsor and host the kiddush luncheon for all after the religious service. She said she believes that just because she can’t be there, doesn’t mean the rest of the Jewish community should lose out.
“We have learned so much from Betty and continue to learn from her strong and deep respect that she has for Judaism,” said Rabbi Mendy Huwitz of the Greyston Jewish Center Chabad of Yonkers. “As Betty continues to be a proud, strong Jew, we want to give this opportunity to every Jew – no matter of their level of observance – that they, too, can be victorious over the Holocaust.”
For more information about Chabad of Yonkers, and joining this community, visit www.JewishYonkers.com or call 914-963-
