Glastonbury — For Rabbi Philip Lazowski, the story of his childhood is a story of survival.

At just 11 years old, Lazowski narrowly avoided death when the Nazis invaded Bielica, Poland, rounding up the Jewish people and splitting them into two groups. To the left were the nurses, doctors, and tailors who were chosen to live because they would be useful. To the right were those who were chosen to die because the Nazis saw them as undesirable.

"I stood in line waiting to be sent to death," he said.

It was then that he had to make a quick and lifesaving decision.

Scared and alone, he saw a woman holding a nursing certificate with her two young daughters and asked if she would pretend to be his mother. She agreed in the hopes that the plan would work.

With her help, Lazowski was sent to the right side.

"We joined the ranks of the fortunate," he said.

Now 93 and the rabbi at Emanuel Synagogue in West Hartford, Lazowski spoke of his life during an interfaith event at the First Church of Christ on Thursday to remember not only those who perished during the Holocaust, but those who survived.

Carol Fishman, chairperson of the Glastonbury Holocaust Remembrance Project Board, said she was inspired to educate people about the Holocaust after attending a March of the Living trip in April 2023, where she and others went to Poland and toured concentration camps.

"All 10,000-plus participants in the March of the Living trip, marched from Auschwitz to Birkenau in silence to commemorate the lives lost in the Holocaust," Fishman said. "I felt I knew a tremendous amount about the Holocaust before the trip, but until you actually go to these camps, walk in the footsteps of the innocent victims, and personally witness the horror and depravity of the Nazi ideology, can you begin to comprehend the violence that emanated from hatred and lies."

For those who experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first-hand and for those who didn't, the 400 attendees of Thursday's service were tasked with a job — to make sure the story continues to be told, and to not be a bystander to any discrimination or injustice.

"We must take action. Action is important," Lazowski said.

Julia Rosner said it was through her parents' stories that she learned of the atrocities. Her parents, both Austrian, were Holocaust survivors. She said her father was taken to a concentration camp at age 17 and spent more than five years doing hard labor to survive.

"He would carry logs. He only ate soup and bread," she said. "He was always starving."

She said her father lived to be 95 years old and her mother lived to be 91.

Rachel Donnell's experience with her parents was different. She said her father couldn't speak about his experience until he was 75 years old, but her mother would tell stories about it at the dinner table.

Donnell painted a picture for the congregation of what it was like for her parents and for the millions who were sent to the camps.

"A number is branded on you; you are just a number," she said.

For Lazowski, another chance meeting during his college years in America would bring his story full circle — and start a new chapter in his life.

While speaking about his childhood in Bielica with another guest at an event, they spoke of their friend's mother, Miriam Rabinowitz, who had saved a little boy from death.

Lazowski was that boy.

With little to go on, other than that she was one of many with the last name of Rabinowitz living in Hartford, he took a chance and called the first one on the operator's list. He had found his rescuer again.

And today, he has been married to Rabinowitz's daughter, Ruth, for almost 69 years, with three sons and seven grandchildren.