Some religious school students at Temple Emanu-El heard a firsthand account of the Holocaust recently. And they saw the New York premiere of a German-made Holocaust documentary.

During two Yom HaShoah speeches at the Upper East Side Reform synagogue, Holocaust survivor Leslie Schwartz talked about his wartime experiences (the rest of his family died in Auschwitz) and showed a documentary about his life produced by a Bavarian  television channel (an English-language version was recently released at his request).

Rabbi Mayer Zarchi recognized the loud blasts he heard, and the smell of burnt flesh in the air, when he stepped out of a café in downtown Boston Monday afternoon.

He had been near a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv several years ago. “It was a very similar sound.”