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Abe Chapnick arrived at Auschwitz in January 1945 only to see the sign ''Auschwitz is closed.'' In Buchenwald, no smoke came out of the crematorium chimney, and water -- not gas -- came out of the showers.

Those are among the reasons why Chapnick, liberated at the age of 14 and now living in Howell, remembers the Holocaust not only for the tragedy, but for his good fortune.

''I was a pretty bright boy,'' Chapnick, speaking on Yom Hashoah, April 11, at the Martin and Edith Stein Assisted Living Residence in Somerset, said of him survival skills. ''I had everything that counted.''

''And that was only the beginning,'' he continued. ''That was just 1 percent. The other 99 percent was luck.''

The ''bubbes and zaides'' like those who live at the Stein Residence have carried the torch of Jewish continuity ''like they are in the Olympics,'' and pass on that torch to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Rabbi Aryeh Goodman, director of Chabad of East Brunswick said. The message was a poignant one for an audience that, for the most part, lived in the generation of the Holocaust.

''Don't think that in this point and time your job is anywhere near done,'' Goodman told the residents of their duty to ensure Jewish continuity.

Raya Ben Haim, a Hebrew teacher at Moshe Aaron Yeshiva High School in South River, organized the program along with Miriam Einhorn. Naomi Ben Haim, a student at Bruriah High School in Elizabeth, MAYHS student Yonina Kligman, and Bruriah student Britt Berlin read poems and stories, and the singing of ''Lu Yehi'' and ''Al Kol Ele'' added an Israeli dimension to the program.

''For me, it's very important to give to people, to my students, to anyone around, how it's important to remember this day and never forget,'' Raya, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, told The Jewish State.

Chapnick said his parents enrolled him in private school to protect him from anti-Semitism in Lodz, Poland, but that anti-Semites were still ''always around.'' Still, life was ''pretty nice'' until the Holocaust began in 1939, he said.

After his family moved to a small, 75 percent Jewish town in the unoccupied territories, his father was taken away and he lived with his mother, grandmother, and brother. Chapnick's father told him ''we'll live through this all,'' but it was the last time he saw him.

Among a total of 10 women and 10 children, Chapnick's family hid in a hole for several weeks and ran out of food and water. The group was ''fairly well organized'' but people got on each other's nerves, Chapnick said. They eventually marched through the woods to a town 30 miles away where their relatives lived, hearing gunshots while crossing the river. The Germans' search dogs were ''no further than I am from you,'' Chapnick said, but couldn't find his group.

In the ghetto with his cousins, Chapnick's job was finding bread and water. When his mother was taken away to work in an ammunition factory, Chapnick bonded over bread with his distraught brother.

''Through the tears, we had a piece of bread and went to sleep,'' he said.

Chapnick and his brother slept in barns, stables, and deserted homes throughout the harsh Polish winter, with temperatures going well below zero, and alternated who would be on guard every two hours. When soldiers came to ask for two volunteers to go to the ammunition factory, they took Chapnick and another boy -- making it the last time Chapnick saw his brother. In the factory, Chapnick was told that, incidentally, his mother (who survived) was transferred to another factory the day her arrived. With almost three years working in factories, ''I was a foreman at the age of 12,'' he said.

On cattle cars, Chapnick traveled for 15 days and 300 miles, ending up at Buchenwald. When there no smoke coming out of the crematorium, ''well, we were kind of happy,'' he said.

When Chapnick rolled over at night in Block 66, where he slept with 16 prisoners in 10-by-16 foot space, he often found someone who couldn't move at night, meaning they were dead. He was eventually moved to the children's block, Block 8, where ''life was much easier.''

Chapnick said his wife never travels with him when he speaks about the Holocaust, saying, ''How many times could I hear it?'' Chapnick, however, insists it's his duty.

''I'm not a masochist, I [speak about the Holocaust] because I owe a debt to the ones that didn't make it,'' he said.

Goodman recounted a story of a rabbi who needed to prove the Jewish identity of children who lived among Christians in homes and hiding facilities during the Holocaust. The rabbi sent a Jewish woman into a bedroom, and when the woman started saying the ''Shema'' prayer, all the children who were Jewish called out ''mommy.'' The rabbi went from home to home repeating the process.

Today, the same danger of Jewish children being left out and losing their religious identity exists, Goodman said. Simple prayers and education, among other elements, are the keys to Jewish continuity, he said.

''What we think was a Holocaust then, we are also going through a little Holocaust today,'' Goodman said.

Of children, Chapnick said, ''They're the ones, they're the ones that are going to remember me.''

''We, in the elderly ages, have to have the stamina to hold through,'' Chapnick said.

Einhorn said that while the Holocaust is still fresh in the minds of survivors, it can seem ''like ancient history'' to younger generations. No matter your age, it's important to remember that ''in whatever form you observe Yom Hashoah, the memory of the 6 million victims will live on.''