Special Kel Moleh and Kaddish Honoring World War II Veteran and Liberator Alan Moskin

Rockland Daily Staff

World War II Veteran, Gershon Reuven ben Mayer Nissan (Alan) Moskin, passed away on Shabbos at the age of 96 and was laid to rest today with full military honors. He was among the American soldiers who liberated the concentration camp where Rockland County Legislator Aron Wieder's grandmother was imprisoned and later spent nearly 40 years speaking out against hate and inhumanity, often sharing his message with young schoolchildren.

"I am so indebted to Alan Moskin and the other soldiers who freed my grandmother and 15,000 other Hungarian Jews from that horrific camp," Legislator Wieder says. "Without their intervention, these people, imprisoned only because they were Jews, faced certain death. I would not be here." 

Mrs. Farkas, Legislator Wieder's grandmother, and Mr. Moskin met – perhaps for the second time - during a special gathering held prior to a County Legislature meeting in 2013. She had been liberated on May 4, 1945, from a camp in Gunskirchen, Austria, after being forced to march there from her home in Hungary.  

This afternoon following the burial, a minyan gathered at his kever, arranged by Legislator Wieder, a short hesped was delivered, and Kel Moleh was recited by Legislator Wieder, followed by Kaddish intoned by Rabbi Yosef C. Golding, a son-in-law of Reb Yosef Friedenson z’l who was also liberated by the American army.

"I wanted to make sure to honor the man who was a living legend in Rockland," Wieder shares with Rockland Daily. "Arranging for a minyan for Kaddish was the least I could do when the niftar did so much to perpetuate Holocaust remembrance for decades." 

Yehi Zichro Baruch