Norwich — The best way to honor two women who dedicated themselves to fighting racism and discrimination in the region is to follow their example, speakers said during a remembrance event on Tuesday.

Nearly 70 people gathered for the inaugural Henny Simon Remembrance event at Three Rivers Community College, “Parallel Lives — Bridging Communities,” to remember holocaust survivor Henny Simon and civil rights activist Jacqueline Owens, the longest-serving leader of the Norwich branch of the NAACP.

“We have a stark rise in anti-Semitism. We have people of color who drive with the fear that they may not make it home, or walk into a coffee store and get arrested for just being. While we have made progress on some fronts, we lack in others,” said event co-chair Estelle Bogdonoff.

“We still have economic, racial, social and health inequality. Racism, anti-Semitism and all discrimination are propelled by the fear of the unknown. We need to learn what our biases are, how to be good neighbors, to be a community and to look to each other for our future,” she said.

Simon survived Nazi concentration camps, the murder of her mother in the killing fields, and persecution as a child. She later became a prominent citizen in Colchester, a volunteer and spiritual leader of the town’s chapter of Hadassah, the worldwide Jewish women’s organization.

Owens, the 30-year president of the Norwich NAACP, championed racial equality, youth achievement and education, and was known to many as “Mother Owens.”

Both women died in 2017: Simon, 91, in a car crash April 4 near her Colchester home, and Owens, 86, at her home in Lebanon.

There is nothing that “could truly explain how much she meant to me,” said Dianne Daniels, president of the Norwich branch of the NAACP. "I can’t even explain it. I don’t have the words. How do you explain this petite, loving, strong and insightful woman who had the God-given ability to bring out the best in everyone she came in contact with? If you didn’t like Mother Owens, there was something wrong with you.”

“She did not give in to the fear,” said Roz Etra, event co-chair, describing Simon’s terrifying experience as a teenager in Nazi Germany. “She kept walking across that narrow bridge and survived and lived in spite of the fear.”

Several organizations co-sponsored the event, including Three Rivers, Hadassah, Norwich NAACP, Adventures in Lifelong Learning and the Rose and Sigmund Strochlitz Holocaust Resource Center of the Jewish Federation of Eastern Connecticut.

Romana Primus of New London, president of the Jewish Federation, spoke about the Holocaust resource center, which includes a program that sends groups of students to the homes of Holocaust survivors and their children to learn their stories.

Rebecca Reinhard was one of those students and described visiting Simon.

“Getting the chance to hear her story in such a personal environment with much more detail was an incredibly powerful and moving experience,” she said.

Reinhard “got to see the strong, independent and fun-loving woman that she came to be. I learned a lot from Henny. I think the most important thing was that we cannot let our past define us but use it to help us grow,” she said.

Ariana Daniels, first vice president of the Norwich branch of the NAACP, described Owens as “caring, generous, selfless,” everything you would want in someone. As a child, she got to know Owens, and stayed at her house as a girl when her parents left town. “She stayed right with me and told me I was special and saw something in me that sometimes I didn’t even see in myself,” Ariana Daniels said.

Dianne Daniels urged the audience to lead others by example and with sincerity.

"Be a person of integrity," she said. "Mean what you say and say what you mean. Exemplify grace, elegance and intelligence in everything that you do. Put others before yourself."

d.straszheim@theday.com