Peter Simenauer of Cape Coral, Fla., speaks about his experiences escaping from Nazi Germany on Wednesday at the Marquette Interfaith Holocaust Memorial Service at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marquette. The event resumed after a three-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — It would have been a happier travelogue if the circumstances weren’t so tragic.

The Marquette-area Interfaith Holocaust Memorial Service resumed its four-decade history on Wednesday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marquette following a three-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A reception took place after the service at nearby Temple Beth Sholom.

The guest speaker was Peter Simenauer of Cape Coral, Florida, who was born to Jewish parents in Berlin in 1935. The family eventually escaped from Nazi Germany when he was 5 years old.

He said he has a varied background, which includes Eastern European Jewish and Irish heritages, among others.

“I am a pharmacy of different races,” Simenauer said.

Simenauer talked about his escape from Germany as well as his subsequent life, showing things like family photographs and a passport with the letter “J” — signifying the Jewish faith of that person — in a slide show to document his journey.

He showed pictures of his relatives, including a picture of his father, Kurt, following his time in a concentration camp. Not surprisingly, he looked way older than his years.

“The atmosphere in Germany was not good for Jews,” Simenauer said.

For example, his family could not hold a bris for him.

After his father’s escape from a concentration camp, the family crossed from Germany into France, and from the Port of Marseille, boarded a ship to South America and landed in Brazil.

Of course, there were challenges.

For example, Simenauer said passage to Brazil cost $6,275 in today’s dollars. The family also had only 14 days to leave Germany, with Simenauer showing a list of possessions his family had to leave behind in Berlin.

After taking a train and streetcar to boarding school every week in Brazil, he embarked on a trade career in that country. Simenauer eventually immigrated to the U.S. where he has lived since, working in the tool-and-die and engineering industries in Toledo.

The service included readings from participants from Temple Beth Sholom and other various faiths throughout the area, including the Marquette Area Baha’i Community, the Marquette Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Hope Methodist Church, the Lake Superior Society of Friends, Lake Superior Zendo and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. Choral pieces were presented by the Marquette Male Chorus and Marquette Senior High School.

The event was timed to closely coincide with the annual Jewish observance of Yom HaShoah, the Hebrew name for the Holocaust Remembrance Day. The date — the 27th day of the month of Nissan on the Jewish calendar — was chosen to memorialize the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The Marquette Interfaith Forum began in the mid-1980s to discuss religious, moral, ethical and community matters frankly between members of various religious groups in the Marquette area. It continues to meet monthly except during the summer.

In the early 1990s, the service and the forum were combined ito become the annual Interfaith Holocaust Memorial Service and speaker tour, planned and supported by Temple Beth Sholom and the Marquette Interfaith Forum.

Wednesday’s service concluded with a recitation on behalf of St. Paul’s, which read in part: “Transfigure the numbness, whereby we remain content in our ignorance of suffering, of holocaust.”

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.