DEATH CAMP SURVIVORS TEACH OF VOTE'S VALUE.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

Renee Firestone arrived in this country 50 years ago today - the night Truman beat Dewey.

Arrived a young woman on a flight from Prague, Czechoslovakia - by way of 14 months in Auschwitz.

``Who'd you vote for?'' asked the excited children of the Jewish family offering their home to this young Holocaust survivor immigrating to the United States.

Renee just stood there shaking her head, not understanding. Voting? What was this voting?

``I had no idea what they were talking about,'' Renee says today. ``Six years later, I was a U.S. citizen, and I knew all about voting and democracy. I haven't missed a vote since.''

Neither has Henry and Jadzia Rosmarin of Encino, who both call the greatest day of their lives the day they became U.S. citizens in 1953, and were given the vote.

``We came from a country where we had no voice, where laws were made up, and edicts were passed without the people having any say,'' said Rosmarin, who grew up with Jadzia in a small town on the Polish-German border. Both spent much of World War II in concentration camps.

``So you can see how much we appreciated the chance to vote,'' he said. ``The only way for the people to defend democracy is to speak out, and speaking out is casting your ballot.''

Today is the day we're all supposed to speak out in this country. But the voting projections say only about half of the registered voters will.

The other half will have plenty of reasons why they've chosen not to vote. Not to speak out from the ballot box.

None of them wash, though, with the Renee Firestones and Henry Rosmarins of our country - the people who have come here from places where they had no vote, only tyranny.

It is hard for them, they say, to understand this malaise that seems to strike so many Americans today.

``I don't understand how people can criticize this country all the time - its president, its Congress, and everything else going on, but when the time comes to vote, to voice their opinion, they don't show up,'' Firestone says.

That is why she spends much of her time on the road for the Simon Weisenthal Center, trying to reach schoolchildren and young adults before they slip into the malaise of the nonvoting class.

Her message is simple and clear. Don't take anything for granted, especially democracy, she says.

``I don't want the next generation of voters to feel that they don't have to think about things like freedom of speech and democracy - that they don't have to vote because it will all be taken care of for them,'' she says.

It can be, both she and Rosmarin say. Taken care of by the Hitlers, the Mussolinis and all the other tyrants more than willing to step in and make all the decisions.

``A wise man once said the greatest support for demagogues is indifference,'' Rosmarin said.

``It's the people who say, Who cares? who help the demagogues the most - whose silence makes injustice and intolerance possible in any country.''

And, just in case there is anyone who thinks such things would never be possible in this democratic country, a quick history lesson is in order.

It comes from Scott Semel of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in Universal City. His father, Aron, was a survivor of the Holocaust.

``It's important to remember that the Nazis were democratically elected,'' Semel said. ``Votes do matter.

``If we believe in a free society, then we need to show a united front. And we don't show that if 60 percent of the people tell the people in power we don't care. It's not important to us to make our voices heard.''

Renee Firestone never had the chance to make her voice heard in Czechoslovakia.

Neither did Henry and Jadzia Rosmarin in their little town on the border of Poland and Germany.

Then they came to the United States, and they haven't missed a vote since.