Daily Alert Archives

Holocaust Remembrance Day's Torch-Lighters

[Jerusalem Post] Six Holocaust survivors lit torches at the state ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Wednesday night: Menachem Katz was born in 1925 in Berezhany, Poland. Together with 30 other people, Katz's family hid in a secret room in the ghetto and escaped deportation. Later, Katz hid with his mother and younger sister at the home of a Polish farmer. Katz studied architecture at the Technion in Haifa, won many prizes in his field, and designed the museum at Kibbutz Baram in memory of the Jews of Berezhany. Noemi Shadmi, nee Spitz, was born in 1931 in Debrecen, Hungary. In 1944, Shadmi's father and older brother were taken to a forced labor camp and murdered. Later her mother was taken away at gunpoint. She survived in the Budapest ghetto. In 1948, Shadmi enlisted in the IDF, serving as a combat officer and receiving an award for bravery. She served in the Israel Police for 20 years, retiring with the rank of commander. Zvi Unger was born in 1929 in Sosnowiec, Poland. In September 1943, Unger was sent to Birkenau. When he got off the train, an inmate whispered to him that he should say he was 18. Thus he survived the selection, and later many others by hiding under benches in the work camp. In 1948 he fought in the War of Independence and in 1949 he was among the founders of Kibbutz Malkiya on the Lebanese border, where he still makes his home. Ester Samuel-Cahn was born in 1933 in Oslo, Norway. In the summer of 1942, her father, Rabbi Yitzhak Julius Samuel, the rabbi of Norwegian Jewry, was arrested and later murdered in Auschwitz. In November 1942, a member of the Norwegian underground and friend of the family warned them of the impending arrest of the Jews, and she was hidden with Christian neighbors. The family later fled to Sweden. In 2004, Prof. Ester Samuel-Cahn was awarded the Israel Prize in Statistics. Michael Maor was born in 1933 in Halberstadt, Germany. After the Nazis' rise to power, his parents fled to Yugoslavia. The family lived in Italian-held territory and in an Italian concentration camp. After the Italian surrender to the Allies in September 1943, Maor's family fled to an area controlled by partisans. In June 1945, he arrived in Israel and later served as a paratrooper and officer. He established the intelligence branch of the Border Police, serving as their national intelligence officer for 15 years. Meir Brand was born in 1936 in Bochnia, Poland. In August 1943, sensing the end of the ghetto, his parents decided to smuggle him out. Arriving alone in Budapest, he joined the refugees and orphans who slept under bridges by night; by day, they collected food scraps from the markets. In August 1945, he emigrated to Israel and participated in Israel's wars, from the Sinai Campaign to the First Lebanon War. Brand studied agricultural economics and later managed a division of the Tnuva food products cooperative.
2008-05-01 01:00:00
Full Article