More than one hundred guests attended the HMC’s annual spring breakfast at the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center, including rabbinical and community leaders, elected officials, Holocaust survivors, residents of Brooklyn – and beyond.

In addition to a delectable breakfast provided by New Star Caterers, the event featured the intriguing saga of The Secret of Priest’s Grotto – a Holocaust Survival Story. Presented with a vivid slide show narrated by renowned cave explorer and author, Chris Nicola, this remarkable real life story relates how 38 Jews, from a two year old child to a woman in her seventies, survived for more than a year by hiding underground in a cave known as Priest’s Grotto. Having overcome isolation, starvation, deprivation and the constant fear of discovery – of the 14,000 Jews in the area before the war – they were among the fewer than 300 who survived the Nazi onslaught. Sixty years later, after an extensive international search, Mr. Nicola located several of the Jews who lived in the Priest’s Grotto and who now include numerous children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Established in 1985, The Holocaust Memorial Committee is a not-for profit voluntary organization whose mission is remembrance, commemoration and education, including annual gatherings, Yom Hashoa events and outreach to community schools.  In cooperation with the NYC Parks Department, the HMC administers the maintenance and beautification of the Holocaust Memorial Park at the water’s edge of Sheepshead Bay – where more than 1000 names of loved ones and their destroyed communities have been engraved. To inscribe a name in the Holocaust Park and for further information, contact the Holocaust Memorial Committee 60 West End Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11235 tel:718.743.3636  email: [email protected]  visit us on the web: www.thmc.org.

Photos by Gady Schwartz