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Torchlighters on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2020

(Yad Vashem) Each year, six Holocaust survivors are chosen to light torches at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Monday evening, in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Haim Arbiv was born in Benghazi, Libya, in 1934, which was under Italian rule. The treatment of Jews worsened as the authorities and the local Italian residents considered the Jews collaborators with the enemy. In 1942, Haim's family was deported to the Giado concentration camp, 1,200 km. from Benghazi. Hundreds of Jews died of hunger, fatigue and disease in Giado. In 1949, Haim and his family boarded a ship to Israel. Due to his command of Arabic, Haim served in the IDF Intelligence Corps. Zohar Arnon was born in Hungary in 1928. In 1944, the Nazis occupied Budapest. Zohar made contact with the underground Zionist movement, which provided thousands of young Jews with false papers and smuggled them into Romania. Zohar traveled through Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. In January 1945, he finally arrived in Eretz Israel. His parents and two of his sisters were murdered in the Holocaust. Yehuda Beilis was born in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1927. The Germans occupied Lithuania in 1941 and Yehuda's family was sent to the Kovno ghetto. They were taken with thousands of other Jews to the Ninth Fort, the site of the mass murder of Kovno Jewry. Yehuda was pushed to the edge of a pit. He heard shots, and the murdered Jews fell into the pit, bringing him down with them. When he regained consciousness, he found himself in pitch blackness at the bottom of the pit. He made his way out through the bodies and ran away. He was hidden by righteous gentiles for two years. In 1944 he helped smuggle 22 children out of the ghetto with the help of local clergy. Aviva Blum-Wachs was born in Warsaw in 1932. Her mother, Luba, was the deputy director of a nursing school. When the Warsaw ghetto was established in October 1940, Luba secured a building for the school. In the summer of 1942, the residents of the nursing school were marched to the departure point for deportations to the death camps. Luba managed to convince the Germans that the nurses were essential to the efforts to deal with the epidemics in the ghetto, and the Germans let the nurses go. In the Aktion of January 1943, the Germans barged into the hospital and shot hundreds of patients, physicians and nurses. Luba had received a few minutes' warning from the underground resistance, and managed to hide several of the nurses and patients, as well as her children, in the basement. Avraham Carmi was born in Poland in 1928. After the German invasion, his family fled to his uncle Moshe Posner, who managed the Warsaw Jewish cemetery. In the summer of 1942, the Germans came to search the cemetery. Avraham was taken, along with other cemetery workers, to the departure point for deportations, but he escaped. The Germans discovered Avraham's relatives hiding in the cemetery, and shot them. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943, the Germans discovered their bunker and Avraham and Moshe were sent to various camps. Moshe watched over Avraham and shared his food with him, helping him every step of the way. Moshe died of exhaustion and disease just two days before liberation. Leah Reuveni was born in Czechoslovakia in 1926 and in 1929 her family moved to Antwerp, Belgium. When the city came under aerial attack in May 1940, the family fled to France. When the Germans occupied southern France in November 1942, the family fled to the Italian zone and survived with the help of a righteous priest. Later her father was deported to the camps and murdered. In 1960, she immigrated to Israel and worked as a hospital nurse.
2020-04-20 00:00:00
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