Wilmington  - By J.L. MILLER
The News Journal

WILMINGTON -- Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a "pretext" for Israeli aggression against the Palestinians.

Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker says Ahmadinejad is "an idiot."

New Castle County Executive Chris Coons calls Ahmadinejad one of the world's "crazy men."

U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., is a little more diplomatic, labeling Ahmadinejad "an extremely violent [man] that has to be watched carefully."

And Lt. Gov. Matt Denn, who is Jewish, says he won't dignify Ahmadinejad's incendiary "rantings" Monday at the United Nations racism conference with a comment.

Instead, the Delaware political leaders and an auditorium full of people gathered Tuesday afternoon in the Carvel State Office Building for the Holocaust Day of Remembrance, sponsored by the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Center and the Jewish Federation of Delaware.

They gathered not only to remember the 6 million people who died during the Nazis' persecution of the Jews, but the courage of those who survived and who keep memories of that awful time very much alive -- people like Wilmington residents Dorothy Finger and Ann Jaffe.

Ahmadinejad was just a sordid footnote to the remembrance, a man whose name could not be spoken in the same breath with those of Holocaust survivors such as Finger and Jaffe.

"There's still Hitlers. There's still Nazis," Baker told the audience, a diverse audience of Jews and Christians, black and white. "His day of reckoning will come, like everyone else's."

"I'm not going to dignify the Iranian leader's rantings ... denying the Holocaust," Denn said. Instead, he said how pleased he was when he read in the newspaper that Ahmadinejad's speech was repeatedly interrupted with shouts of "Shame! Shame!"

Coons found that gratifying as well.

"There are crazy men who run countries, who, thankfully, are shouted down," Coons said.

It turns out that Ahmadinejad actually toned down his speech before delivering it Monday, dropping language that described the Holocaust as "ambiguous and dubious."

But there was no ambiguity in the Carvel auditorium Tuesday as the audience rose to its feet in respect when Finger and Jaffe recounted just a sampling of their experiences.

Fittingly, Finger did not speak Ahmadinejad's name, saying only that "we are once again reminded how easily bigotry and prejudice can lead to genocide."

Finger was born in 1929 in Poland, which was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1939. Her mother and father died in concentration camps, and she lost about 90 members of her family.

The young girl was left to fend for herself, as were countless children whose parents were shipped off to the death camps or executed on the spot.

"The bodies of the dead children lined the streets of the ghetto. I was a lucky child: I survived," Finger said.

From the age of 11 to 14, she endured life in three ghettos and a forced-labor camp before fleeing to a deep forest, where she suffered from hunger and typhus and survived a bullet that glanced the side of her head.

Somehow, before her death, Finger's mother managed to send a note from the concentration camp. In it, she asked her daughter to spread the word about the horrors that had taken place -- a request that Finger has more than honored. She has given more than 300 presentations to schools and other organizations, driving home the point that those who deny the Holocaust happened are so terribly wrong.

"How can I forget the torment and pain my mother and I were forced to endure?" she asked.

Jaffe, also from Poland, said she initially would share her stories only with other survivors.

"We didn't share with others. We felt no one could understand our pain," Jaffe said.

But one day Jaffe remembered a schoolgirl friend she last saw on Yom Kippur in 1942, as the Nazis were rounding up Jews. The girl was dressed as a farmer's daughter, trying to escape notice.

The girl didn't make it out alive, Jaffe said, "but I did." And, like Finger, Jaffe decided to tell her story.

Finger and Jaffe, who endured so much, made a point Tuesday of thanking their adopted country, a country where men like Ahmadinejad are more reviled than revered.

"The United States of America: Thank you. You gave me my freedom," Finger said.