KERHONKSON, N.Y. — Lillian Feintuch was 5 ½ when the Nazis took Hungary, sweeping her family from their home into the ghetto, except for her father, who was taken to a slave labor camp.

On Tuesday, she sat at a brown folding table, smiling proudly over a bejeweled silver and pearl necklace she had made. The day before, she painted a picture of a golden vase with pink and red flowers. It’s all part of the programming at this year’s Adolph and Lotte Rosenberg Summer Retreat for Holocaust survivors.

Every year, she looks forward to the retreat, especially since her husband died in October 2020. Most days, she’s alone in her Brooklyn apartment. “It’s important for me to be with people,” she told eJewishPhilanthropy. “This is an amazing place to be. … For the rest of the year, I think about the good times that I’m having here.”

A partnership between Blue Card and Nachas Health and Family Network — two nonprofits that support financially insecure survivors — this year’s retreat was held from Aug. 17-21 at the Hudson Valley Resort and Spa in the Catskills and was attended by over 40 survivors, mostly from the predominantly Orthodox Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. On Tuesday, a bus of volunteers, including freed Israeli hostage Andrei Kozlov, visited the survivors. Throughout the day, as they described it, the volunteers supported the survivors, and the survivors supported the volunteers.

“It’s really impressive someone can put something like this together,” former Israeli hostage Andrei Kozlov, who endured Hamas’ captivity for 247 days, told eJP. “It’s important to bring joy into [the lives] of people like this.”

Since the retreat was launched in 2008, the programing hasn’t changed much, Masha Pearl, executive director of Blue Card, told eJP. “It’s the same staff that [the survivors] look forward to seeing, the food they like, the facilities that they like, and that provides a lot of comfort.”

Many of the same survivors return year after year. For most, it’s a trip that they couldn’t afford on their own. Nothing in the scheduling is rushed, Pearl said, and “opportunities for socialization are key.”

This year’s programming included magic shows, morning walks, and plenty of bingo. There was even a lunchtime performance by Orthodox comedian Eli Lebowicz.

“Clap your hands if you’re from Borough Park,” Lebowicz said to a boisterous audience who were evidently more interested in talking to each other than listening to his act. He ended his set by joking that “there will be Maariv in the back in five minutes.”

The lunch spread included fresh fruits, salads, knishes, mac ‘n cheese and plenty of cake. “The food is a big deal,” Pearl said. The menu for the five days had all the staples, from pickled veggies to matzah ball soup. 

The current venue has been used since 2022. For a time, the retreat was held at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Connecticut and the Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp in New York. One of the venues “had more of a vegetarian menu, so people were like, ‘What is this? We need our brisket,’” Pearl recalled.

Volunteers for the day trended younger, including families with preteen children. Many survivors were excited to share their experiences with the visitors.

One survivor, Ari Felsman, 90, carried a manila envelope filled with photographs of him being honored by the U.S. Air Force along with other survivors. “I’m happy I can tell you how I survived the war,” he told eJP, after offering a forceful handshake, which sent him into a fit of laughter at his strength. Then, he quickly recounted the story of his family’s escape from Warsaw before spending more time discussing how proud he was of his family, including a daughter-in-law who teaches at Yeshiva University. “You don’t believe me?” he asked. 

In his folder, he also showed a photo of himself and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, of whom he was not a fan, especially based on his trash bin collection policies. It was one of his many fervent speeches, including one about the importance of Israel, a common topic for many survivors who consider the country as essential to ensuring another Holocaust never occurs again.

Blue Card prefers for volunteers to have ongoing relationships with the survivors. Some who visited Tuesday regularly call, write letters and send care packages to the attendees.

For Robin Weiss, comedian and the author of Kugelahs Kugbook, who led a kugel-making class for attendees, volunteering with the survivors was “a dream of mine.”

Her grandmother was a survivor. “She moved here when she was in her teen years,” she said, “and she looked at life as such an opportunity and gave me that mindset and perspective in life.”

When 26-year-old Weiss started teaching classes and selling custom kugels in 2023, she did it in her grandmother’s honor. “I couldn’t think of anyone else who could have inspired this business more,” she said. “Everything I do, I have her in mind. I could not pass up this opportunity to come out and bake kugels and lead a baking class with Holocaust survivors, because I know my grandma would be really proud of me for it.”

It’s been a tough couple of years for attendees, post-Oct. 7, with antisemitism skyrocketing, especially in New York City, where, in April, the NYPD reported that 62% of hate crimes in the city were directed at Jews. Last year, 345 incidents were reported.

The massacres in Israel were “like another type of Holocaust,” Feintuch said. “When it happened, I relived a lot of my experiences, what I went through, the fear and being homeless and taking me away and being hungry.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Kozlov shared his experiences with the survivors, and the survivors created cards and care packages that will be displayed at the Consulate General of Israel in New York before being sent to released hostages.

As joyous as every year’s retreat is, there is also a sense of loss, Pearl said. Over the next decade, the survivor population is expected to shrink by 70%. Most in attendance at the retreat were young children during the Holocaust.

“Over these years [that the retreat has run], we’ve lost some survivors that were very near and dear to us, and we were grateful that we were able to make an impact in their lives,” Pearl said. “It’s definitely a rare opportunity, and it’s a time-limited mission.”

Pearl hopes attendees can leave their worries behind, forget about their financial woes, the blazing city, their landlords, their trauma. The retreat is meant “to give something back to them and show them the best that humanity has to offer, because they’ve witnessed the worst.”

Feintuch jokes that she even sleeps better at the retreat. That morning, she set a record by snoozing until 8 a.m. Her motto is to not let a few horrific years ruin the rest of her life. “Just forget about it and say this part of my life is the little part,” she said. “Just go on and be happy.”

Born into a religious family, Feintuch is still observant. When she told her survival story at the retreat, a slight smile snuck onto the corner of her lips numerous times, often at the most harrowing moments: bombs exploding nearby, starving in a room with 32 others, a Nazi catching her on the run. At one point, she was on a train, headed to Auschwitz. 

Every time it seemed like death was around the corner, a miracle happened — and she smiled. Instead of shooting her, the Nazi who caught her broke down in tears — he had mistaken her for his daughter, so he helped her escape, even giving her and her family food. That train headed to Auschwitz? It broke down after the tracks were bombed. She had witnessed miracles, she said. It’s the reason that she survived, and she’s enjoying every moment of her time while she’s still here.