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Holocaust Survivors to Light Memorial Torches Sunday
(Jerusalem Post) Sam Sokol - Six Holocaust survivors are slated to light torches memorializing the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis, at the opening Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem Sunday night. Peretz Hochman fought in the Polish underground against the Nazis during World War II. He made aliya in 1946 and was wounded during the War of Independence. Hochman died on Sunday and his widow, Sima, will represent him. Baruch Kopold was forced by the Nazis to cover up the mass graves containing most of the Jews of Iwje, Belarus. After escaping, he made his way to the forest and eventually joined Tuvia Bielski's Jewish brigade. Otto Dov Pressburger, from Czechoslovakia, was one of the first Jews to be interned in Auschwitz, and witnessed the first experiments in gassing Jews to death in that camp. He was later forced to build the crematorium in Birkenau. Miriam Liptcher, the only survivor of her family, was rendered barren by experiments conducted by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Her efforts in smuggling food and clothing to fellow inmates in Auschwitz saved many lives. Dina Ostrover posed as a Ukrainian, using a forged birth certificate. She hid a Jewish couple in the attic of the inn where she was working. She made her way to Israel in 1949, following eight months of detention by the British in Cyprus. Eliezer Eizenschmidt was a member of the Sonderkommandos tasked by the SS with removing bodies from the gas chambers. He was involved in the planning of a failed revolt against the camp guards. Although he revealed nothing under interrogation, his hair turned white overnight.