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Torchlighters on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2019

(Yad Vashem) Each year, six Holocaust survivors are chosen to light torches at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Wednesday evening, in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Bela Eizenman was born in 1927 in Lodz, Poland, and was imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto. Deported to Auschwitz, she was the last surviving member of her family. She was destined for the gas chambers, but a train to Bergen-Belsen was missing a female prisoner and Bela was sent in her place. In March 1945, she was sent on a death march with other prisoners but escaped. In Israel, Bela studied nursing and served as head nurse in a hospital. Shaul Lubovitz was born in 1934 in Braslav (today in Belarus). A local farmer, Stanislaw Szakel, who was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations, hid Shaul and his relatives on his farm. His uncle then took the family to a group of partisans in the forest. The family reached Israel in 1949. Shaul married Nechama, who was killed in a suicide bombing on a bus in Ramat Gan in 1995. Fanny Ben-Ami was born in 1930 in Baden-Baden, Germany. When Hitler rose to power, her family fled to Paris. The OSE, an organization that rendered aid to Jewish children, smuggled Fanny and a group of children into Switzerland. Her mother took her to the bus and said, "Who knows if we'll see each other again?" They never did. Fanny was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work in the resistance, but she declined to accept it. She immigrated to Israel in 1956. Menachem Haberman was born in 1927 in Orlova, Czechoslovakia, and lived in Munkacs, which was annexed to Hungary in 1938. In May 1944, the Jews in the Munkacs ghetto were deported to Auschwitz. Menachem, the last surviving member of his family, was put to work removing ashes from the crematoria. Once he fell and nearly drowned in a pool of human ash. Sent by train to Buchenwald, of the 150 prisoners who had been in Menachem's open train carriage, 20 arrived alive. Menachem immigrated to Israel in 1950 and married Rivka, a Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands. Sara Shapira was born in 1933 in Radauti in Romanian Bukovina. In 1941, the Romanians deported the Jews of Radauti to Transnistria. During the long journey, many died from the overcrowding, hunger and thirst including Sara's mother and uncle. She was alone at age 9. At a Jewish orphanage in Mogilev she lived in constant hunger. Because beds were in short supply, the children slept on them horizontally. Sara reached Israel in 1948 and married Meir Shapira, a fellow Holocaust survivor. Her son, Rabbi Elimelech Shapira, was killed in a Palestinian shooting attack in the West Bank in 2002. Yehuda Mimon was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1924. In the Krakow ghetto in 1942, he joined the underground group Hehalutz Halohem (The Fighting Pioneer). On December 22, 1942, Yehuda and other resistance members aided in an assault on the Cyganeria cafe in Krakow where German soldiers gathered. Yehuda was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in April 1943. On January 18, 1945, Yehuda and five of his comrades escaped the death march from Auschwitz. He immigrated to Israel in 1946, and returned to Poland in 1963 as First Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw.
2019-05-01 00:00:00
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