It has been more than 68 years, but the wounds of the Holocaust remain fresh for survivors like Roman Kent.
"Tolerance cannot be assumed. We must remember to prevent future atrocities," Kent, a chairman with the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said Sunday.
Kent, born in Lodz, Poland, survived harsh conditions at concentration camps in Lodz, Auschwitz, Mertzbachtal, Dornau and Flossenberg.
More than 2,000 survivors and their loved ones joined Kent Sunday for the nation's largest Holocaust commemoration at the upper East Side's Temple Emanu-El.
Actor Ron Rifkin narrated the harrowing tales of survivors as they slowly walked to the temple's stage to light candles with their children and grandchildren.
A frail Joseph Fox, who was born in 1923, was 16 when he was forced to help build the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto while his family went into hiding.
"He was able to escape from the ghetto and eventually join them," Rifkin read. "He hid under a farmhouse for two years with his brother and father, after his mother and other family members were killed by the Nazis."
He now lives in Brooklyn.
"My mom used to tell me, 'You don't know how lucky you are to have your grandparents,'" recalled Robert Jordan, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust. "Now I tell her, 'I do know how lucky I am.'"
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