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Besides for ceremonies in central New Jersey, several local Jewish leaders got the chance to commemorate the Holocaust on a national stage this month.

Lee Livingston, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, Toby Shylit Mack, Community Relations Committee chair of the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County, and her husband Bob Mack joined U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (N.J.-12) for the National Days of Remembrance ceremony on April 15 at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C.

Since 1982, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has held the ceremony with Holocaust survivors, liberators, Congress members, White House officials, the diplomatic corps, and community leaders in attendance. This year's theme was "Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters." Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, and Gen. David Petraeus, leader of the U.S. Central Command, addressed the crowd with the backdrop of flags of all the army divisions that liberated concentration camps.

Holt, a Democrat who represents parts of Middlesex, Monmouth, Somerset, Hunterdon, and Mercer counties, has attended the ceremony each of his 11 years in Congress. Holt said that "a couple hundred" soldiers who liberated concentration camps were on hand for this year's program.

"Mostly, I find it a time to reflect on what we've already heard, about the role of the righteous gentile, about the survival of hope in the midst of despair, about the will to fight for what might seem like a lost cause," Holt said of the annual ceremony in a phone interview with The Jewish State.

"All of that is stirring, the images of hope within the midst of horror, of the ultimate triumph of liberty," he said.

Holt said Livingston and the Macks are his "longtime friends" and ideal people to invite to the national ceremony because "they are community leaders who I know take their Jewishness very seriously."

"I'm always looking for ways to share this experience more broadly in the community," he said.

Livingston, whose uncle served in the tank division under Gen. George Patton and liberated a camp, said he was particularly moved by the presence of liberators. Now elderly, the soldiers are "unassuming guys" but it's important to realize "how much we owe them," Livingston said.

"It was a moving thing to see these guys all together, all in one place," Livingston said, adding about his grandfather that liberating a camp "impacted him for his entire life."

The ceremony also fell on the 65th anniversary of Toby Shylit Mack's mother's liberation from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945. Her parents later met at a displaced persons camp, and the family immigrated to the U.S. in 1950.

"It was both emotional and uplifting to see the now dwindling troops who liberated the camps, the few remaining eyewitnesses to the horror they encountered, march proudly with their division flags," Mack wrote in an email to The Jewish State. "I was brought to tears several times but especially during the singing of the 'Hymn of the Partisans,' a song my mother sang often as I was growing up."

Mack added that she was "privileged" to attend Holocaust remembrance programs on local, state, and national levels this month -- the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County Yom Hashoah program, the Fort Monmouth Holocaust Remembrance, the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education Remembrance Day hosted by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and the national ceremony.

"As a child of Holocaust survivors, born in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, it was especially poignant during this time of virulent worldwide anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial for me attend these meaningful programs," Mack wrote.

Emphasizing that the Central Jersey Jewish community's programming speaks out against all genocide and not just the Holocaust, Holt said the national ceremony is also "not just an opportunity to say the Kaddish, but to make the political commitment [of] 'never again'."

Livingston said he "got the impression that every New Jersey congressman has been to every one of these [national Holocaust ceremonies], ever since they've been in Congress."

"This is special," Livingston said. "It was a very, very moving program, especially being conducted in the Rotunda of Congress, which is just an awe-inspiring place to begin with."