Holocaust Survivors’ Disco Therapy

Disco is not dead in Brooklyn — where it’s being used to help Holocaust victims get over nightmarish memories.

Trippy lighting and funky music that would have been at home in Studio 54 creates a soothing sensory experience at Minnie’s Place in Canarsie, helping survivors of the greatest atrocity of the 20th century get over their anxiety and grief.

The seniors chillax on beanbag couches and immerse themselves in an interactive environment featuring black lights, a projector beaming psychedelic images on a wall, a “shower curtain” of multi-colored fiber-optic strands and an aromatherapy diffuser that makes the room smell like a trip to The Body Shop.

 

“I feel like I’m in heaven,” said Dora Zalcberg, 89, who was just 16 in 1939 when she was snatched from her home in Bedzin, Poland, and taken to the Parschnitz concentration camp, where she was spared the gas chamber only because she was a skilled machinist.

“This makes me forget all my problems and what I went through,” Zalcberg said.

The 12-by-9-foot space — which also features voice-sensitive lights and a vibrating bubble column — is a partnership between the non-profit group Blue Card and The Hebrew Educational Society, which houses it in its Seaview Avenue building.

So-called multi-sensory environments have been around since the dawn of disco, devised in the 1970s by the DeHartenburg Institute in the Netherlands. Organizers said the concept of the room was specifically inspired in part by that era’s discotheque scene.

“This is something that hasn’t been tried before — so what is there to lose?” said Blue Card Executive Director Masha Girshin, who said many survivors, now in their twilight years, still struggle with repressed memories and crippling anxiety. “This is for their soul.”

Outfitting and operating the room doesn’t come cheap, costing about $55,000, paid for by Blue Card and the Mazer Family Fund, a private outfit.

But it’s all worth it to Manyia Kolin, 87, among the estimated 15,000 Holocaust survivors still living in Brooklyn.

“It’s very nice. It’s relaxing,” said Kolin, who endured the Bergen Belsen, Flossenburg, Buchenwald and Gross-Rosen death camps.

Still, she wasn’t impressed by the lavender scent that aggressively filled the space. “I like the smell of perfume — Red Door is my favorite.”

Minnie’s Place — named after philanthropist and former Hebrew Educational Society President Minnie Nathanson — is a pilot program that Blue Card aims to roll out nationally, Girshin said.

This year, about 350 survivors are expected to use the Canarsie room, which opened to the public in January. Free sessions are about once a week for 30 to 40 minutes, organizers said.

 

 

 

 

  NY POST