Assemblywoman Wolk honors local Holocaust survivor

Vacaville resident recognized in ceremony on Assembly Floor

SACRAMENTO–Assemblywoman Lois Wolk (D-Davis) recognized Vacaville resident Betty Charfauros yesterday in a special session of the State Legislature called to enact California Holocaust Memorial Week.

Assemblywoman Wolk hosted Charfauros, 70, at a ceremony on the floor of the California Assembly chambers held to increase awareness of the Holocaust within the Legislature and the State. During the ceremony Assembly Members Lloyd Levine and Ira Ruskin presented their resolution proclaiming April 16 through April 22 2007 California Holocaust Memorial Week, and recognized Charfauros along with approximately 120 other Holocaust survivors from throughout the State.

“Each year, Holocaust Memorial Week brings mixed feelings of both great sorrow but also of hope,” said Wolk. “We join to mourn the more than 11 million people murdered during the Holocaust, and to remember the Nazi’s tyranny and inhumanity, and we say clearly, never again.”

The Nazis took Charfauros and her parents from their home in Amsterdam in 1941, when she was three and half years old. Charfauros was shuffled from camp to camp until 1943, when she and 32 other children were freed in a prisoner exchange. She was returned to Amsterdam, where she was raised by her grandparents. She took it upon herself to investigate what happened to her parents.

“I needed to research,” she said. “I needed to know what happened to them.”

She found that her mother and father were taken to the internment camp at Auschwitz, where her mother gave birth to a son. All three died in the camp—Charfauros’ brother when he was less than a year old.

Charfauros has lived in Vacaville for eight years. Before she retired in 1990, she managed a delicatessen in the Bay Area.

The Assembly’s observance of Holocaust Memorial Week was founded on the belief that the world must continue documenting and sharing stories about the Holocaust with each new generation so that the tragedies of the Holocaust will never be repeated. The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. Greek in origin, the word "Holocaust" means "sacrifice by fire."