Found family honors Holocaust survivor Erwin Farkas at Mount Zion memorial

In a Twin Cities gymnasium more than 35 years ago, Julie Rasmussen had her first dance with Erwin Farkas. He approached her with twinkling eyes, she recalled.

As he moved his arms into position, she noticed the tattoo inked into his skin. It was four black numbers. Rasmussen said a jolt rushed through her body as she realized a hard truth: This was a man who had survived the Holocaust as a child.

But then Rasmussen, who would go on to share a decades-long friendship with Farkas, said she had a second realization: “This man is dancing. After all that, after all that loss and hardship and unspeakable horror, he’s here dancing. And having a good time.”

And dance he did — still tapping his feet in his rocking chair in the later years of his life. Farkas died Jan. 1 at age 94.

At a memorial service on Sunday afternoon at Mount Zion Temple, where Farkas had been the last Holocaust survivor, Farkas’ loved ones remembered him as not only remarkably resilient, but also as an intelligent man who radiated curiosity, humor and compassion.

With no remaining immediate family members, he was cherished by the community around him, finding family in his Roseville neighbors who helped him live independently, the folk dance group he grooved with for decades and an unlikely best friendship with a 65-year age gap.

They remembered him as the type of guy whose mailbox overflowed with letters from the human rights and environmental nonprofits he donated to. The type of guy who rescued earthworms and opted to feed the mouse in his basement, instead of trapping it. The type of guy who would randomly ask, “would you like to hear a song?” then project in Hungarian, Yiddish or Hebrew — even when he was in the hospital toward the end.

“He was 15 years old when he never saw his family again, yet he took the rest of us in as family. I mean, who does that?” said neighbor George Niece at the memorial. “The guy just lived it up. He cared about everything from weird little monkeys and baby elephants to Southern Poverty Law [Center].”

More than ten years ago, Ani Djaferian became friends with Farkas when she was 19 years old and he was 84. Their friendship took root when she interviewed him as part of a video project about local Holocaust survivors, and it continued well past that — taking the two of them to movies, to museums, and in 2016, to Poland, where he said he was finally ready to give a testimony at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial.

Djaferian spoke at the Mount Zion Temple memorial of a lighter memory of Farkas she cherishes. Happily inscribed in her mind, is this image: the two of them are at a college party and Farkas has a glowstick around his neck. To the beat of funk music, he’s teaching her classmates to waltz.

“Erwin was the life of the party, despite being six decades older than everyone else in the room,” Djaferian said. “Perhaps Erwin maintained a spirit of everlasting youth because the Holocaust robbed him of it when he was just a teenager.”

Farkas was of Hungarian descent and was born in Ombod, Romania on Aug. 28, 1929, where he grew up surrounded by a large family. His recorded oral history was shared at the memorial.

In the spring of 1944, Nazi occupiers came to the village. His father was deported and Farkas and the rest of his immediate family was sent first to a ghetto, then to Birkenau, the extermination and concentration camp where he last saw his grandfather, mother and three sisters.

Farkas was only 15 years old, but when he noticed that younger boys and old men were being sent toward direct death, he claimed to be 16. The decision put him in the same line with his older brother, Zoltan. They were sent to camps for forced labor, then a death march, before being liberated by American soldiers in 1945.

After time in Kloster Indersdorf, a displaced persons camp in Germany (Farkas would later return multiple times between 2008-2022, reuniting with old friends), Farkas and his brother immigrated to New York, where they lived in the Bronx with relatives.

It was there where Farkas learned English at a high school and began his commitment to educating people about the Holocaust, sharing his story with Americans who had heard about the camps.

It’s a commitment that his community appreciated, and one that carried over to Mount Zion Temple, where he regularly spoke to classrooms about his past.

“He was a really gentle soul,” said Adam Spilker, Mount Zion’s lead rabbi. “He had this ability to just roll up his sleeves, point gently to the numbers that were desecrating his body to this day from being in Auschwitz and tell his story.”

After briefly serving in the Army during the Korean War, Farkas moved to Minnesota for school and received a master’s degree and PhD at the University of Minnesota. He was a clinical psychologist for decades, before retiring, and advocated for social equity and wildlife. He “really loved all living things,” Djaferian said.

“He opened his door for anybody. And here’s a guy who, to be honest, had every reason to dislike humans,” said George Niece, Farkas’ neighbor. “He could have gotten angry, he could’ve given up, but he didn’t. He decided he was going to contribute.”