Other speakers at the opening ceremony of Holocaust Memorial Day last night included Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, child survivor Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, and Yad Vashem Director Avner Shalev.
Olmert, trying to explain why the Nazis were so intent on exterminating each and every Jew, explained, "This pure-hearted Jew, armed with nothing but a prayer book, a tallit [prayer shawl] and teffilin, evoked the murderous fury of the Nazis. He reminded them by his very presence what they sought to forget, make others forget and completely root out of human civilization: the values of justice, equality, grace and faith."
This morning, a two-minute siren was sounded throughout the country to mark the day. Traffic and conversations stopped, as people stood and remembered the murdered six million Jews.
Though stores and businesses are open today, memorial services or programs must be held in every school. Public ceremonies will also be held elsewhere throughout the country, and the closing ceremony will be held, as always, at Kibbutz Lochamei HaGetaot (Ghetto Fighters) in the north. Another ceremony will be held this evening at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, named in memory of the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz.
Six survivors living in Israel lit torches at the Yad Vashem ceremony. The six were:
* Chasia Bornstein (Bielicka), 85, born in Grodno, Poland. She saw a German hang one of her girlfriends in a public square, and remembers that the last thing the hanged girl did was to spit heavily in her executioner's face. "I stood there for hours looking at the bodies of my friend and the two others who were killed there, simply trying to build up enough hatred inside myself so that I would be able to murder a German myself," she later said.
In the Grodno ghetto, Chasia kept the youth occupied, reading them stories and talking about emigrating to Israel. As part of her underground activities, she worked during the day under the alias of a young Polish woman for the family of an SS officer, while at night smuggling weapons, armaments, food and medicines, and gathering intelligence, for the partisans. Thanks to a map of Bialystok she prepared for the Red Army Command, the city was captured without losses. For this, she and her fellow couriers were awarded the highest commendation given to civilians. At the end of the war, Chasia opened the first orphanage for Jewish children in Lodz. For the next 18 months, she wandered through Germany and France with the children. In 1947, she boarded the ship “Theodore Herzl” with more than 500 children in her charge. The ship was caught by the British and sent to Cyprus, where Chasia continued to run educational activities in the youth camp. After six months, the group managed to reach Israel, and to this day, she maintains warm relationships with many of the group’s members.
Chasia married and made her home on Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, working as an educator and an art teacher at Tel Hai College. She has three daughters, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
* Uri Hanoch, 78, who saved his 9-year-old brother's life during German Aktions against ghetto children in Lithuania, despite being beaten to the point of fainting in the process. He later saved the life of a good friend, Chaim Konfitz, and was himself saved when he jumped off a train to Dachau, hiding in a forest until liberation by American soldiers. When he was later reunited with his brother, he remembers that they did not embrace - "and for removing our capacity to love and laugh, I will never forgive the Germans." Uri is married to Yehudit and has 3 children and 5 grandchildren.
* Esther Burstein (Lipscyz), 83, born in Lodz. The daughter of a rabbi, she comes from a long ling of rabbis on her mother’s side. She remembers her grandfather, a rabbi, being ordered to tear and spit on a Torah scroll - but he refused. After the death of her father in a death camp and her mother in the ghetto, Esther became responsible for her two sisters and two cousins. In 1944, they were sent to Auschwitz, where they marched seven kilometers every morning to dig ditches for a water line. She remembers that they all helped each other even under the constant threat of death. After liberation, doctors gave her no chance of surviving, but she managed to recover. She left for Israel with her sister, Mina, in 1946, aboard an illegal immigrant ship, which was caught and sent to Cyprus. In 1948, Esther finally arrived in Israel, and married and moved to Bnei Brak. She now has six children, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
* Hedy Hirsch (Engel), born in 1927 in Czechoslovakia. On Passover 1942, her family and the Jews were taken from their homes. Hedy and her mother escaped to a shop owned by a Slovak acquaintance, who agreed to hide them in his home, while her father was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Hedy remained with her mother throughout the coming years of tribulations, including escape to Hungary, sleeping in cemeteries, and being sent to Auschwitz. After liberation, they returned to Czechoslovakia, and in 1949, they came to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. Hedy works as an ECG technician, and has four children and several grandchildren.
* Kalman Bar-On, 76, who, with his sister, was among the Mengele twins.
* Menachem Frankel, born to a religious family in Antwerp, Belgium in 1936, lived in a convent until the age of 9 not knowing he was a Jew, and later helped found the religious community of Kfar Maimon in southern Israel. He is now married with four children and two grandchildren. Madame Chesneau, who ran a private institution where he and 108 Jewish children spent 18 months, a childless couple named the Hughes, and the priest Alexandre Glasberg of the Amitie Chretienne organization - all of whom helped save Menachem - have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
Olmert, trying to explain why the Nazis were so intent on exterminating each and every Jew, explained, "This pure-hearted Jew, armed with nothing but a prayer book, a tallit [prayer shawl] and teffilin, evoked the murderous fury of the Nazis. He reminded them by his very presence what they sought to forget, make others forget and completely root out of human civilization: the values of justice, equality, grace and faith."
This morning, a two-minute siren was sounded throughout the country to mark the day. Traffic and conversations stopped, as people stood and remembered the murdered six million Jews.
Though stores and businesses are open today, memorial services or programs must be held in every school. Public ceremonies will also be held elsewhere throughout the country, and the closing ceremony will be held, as always, at Kibbutz Lochamei HaGetaot (Ghetto Fighters) in the north. Another ceremony will be held this evening at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, named in memory of the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Mordechai Anielewicz.
Six survivors living in Israel lit torches at the Yad Vashem ceremony. The six were:
* Chasia Bornstein (Bielicka), 85, born in Grodno, Poland. She saw a German hang one of her girlfriends in a public square, and remembers that the last thing the hanged girl did was to spit heavily in her executioner's face. "I stood there for hours looking at the bodies of my friend and the two others who were killed there, simply trying to build up enough hatred inside myself so that I would be able to murder a German myself," she later said.
In the Grodno ghetto, Chasia kept the youth occupied, reading them stories and talking about emigrating to Israel. As part of her underground activities, she worked during the day under the alias of a young Polish woman for the family of an SS officer, while at night smuggling weapons, armaments, food and medicines, and gathering intelligence, for the partisans. Thanks to a map of Bialystok she prepared for the Red Army Command, the city was captured without losses. For this, she and her fellow couriers were awarded the highest commendation given to civilians. At the end of the war, Chasia opened the first orphanage for Jewish children in Lodz. For the next 18 months, she wandered through Germany and France with the children. In 1947, she boarded the ship “Theodore Herzl” with more than 500 children in her charge. The ship was caught by the British and sent to Cyprus, where Chasia continued to run educational activities in the youth camp. After six months, the group managed to reach Israel, and to this day, she maintains warm relationships with many of the group’s members.
Chasia married and made her home on Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, working as an educator and an art teacher at Tel Hai College. She has three daughters, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
* Uri Hanoch, 78, who saved his 9-year-old brother's life during German Aktions against ghetto children in Lithuania, despite being beaten to the point of fainting in the process. He later saved the life of a good friend, Chaim Konfitz, and was himself saved when he jumped off a train to Dachau, hiding in a forest until liberation by American soldiers. When he was later reunited with his brother, he remembers that they did not embrace - "and for removing our capacity to love and laugh, I will never forgive the Germans." Uri is married to Yehudit and has 3 children and 5 grandchildren.
* Esther Burstein (Lipscyz), 83, born in Lodz. The daughter of a rabbi, she comes from a long ling of rabbis on her mother’s side. She remembers her grandfather, a rabbi, being ordered to tear and spit on a Torah scroll - but he refused. After the death of her father in a death camp and her mother in the ghetto, Esther became responsible for her two sisters and two cousins. In 1944, they were sent to Auschwitz, where they marched seven kilometers every morning to dig ditches for a water line. She remembers that they all helped each other even under the constant threat of death. After liberation, doctors gave her no chance of surviving, but she managed to recover. She left for Israel with her sister, Mina, in 1946, aboard an illegal immigrant ship, which was caught and sent to Cyprus. In 1948, Esther finally arrived in Israel, and married and moved to Bnei Brak. She now has six children, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
* Hedy Hirsch (Engel), born in 1927 in Czechoslovakia. On Passover 1942, her family and the Jews were taken from their homes. Hedy and her mother escaped to a shop owned by a Slovak acquaintance, who agreed to hide them in his home, while her father was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Hedy remained with her mother throughout the coming years of tribulations, including escape to Hungary, sleeping in cemeteries, and being sent to Auschwitz. After liberation, they returned to Czechoslovakia, and in 1949, they came to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. Hedy works as an ECG technician, and has four children and several grandchildren.
* Kalman Bar-On, 76, who, with his sister, was among the Mengele twins.
* Menachem Frankel, born to a religious family in Antwerp, Belgium in 1936, lived in a convent until the age of 9 not knowing he was a Jew, and later helped found the religious community of Kfar Maimon in southern Israel. He is now married with four children and two grandchildren. Madame Chesneau, who ran a private institution where he and 108 Jewish children spent 18 months, a childless couple named the Hughes, and the priest Alexandre Glasberg of the Amitie Chretienne organization - all of whom helped save Menachem - have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.