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Torchlighters on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2022

(Yad Vashem) Each year, six Holocaust survivors are chosen to light torches at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins on Wednesday, April 27, in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Shmuel Blumenfeld was born in 1926 in Krakow, Poland. In early 1942 he was arrested and sent to the Plaszow forced labor camp with his father who was murdered there. He escaped deportation to the Belzec extermination camp but was sent to Auschwitz where he worked in a coal mine. In January 1945 he was sent on a death march to Buchenwald. After serving in the IDF, he joined the prison service. During the Eichmann trial, Shmuel was one of Eichmann's guards. "I showed him the number on my arm." Shmuel Blumenfeld passed away on April 15, 2022. Rebecca Elizur was in the first grade when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. The family was arrested in 1942 and taken to the Westerbork transit camp, where deportation trains left weekly for the extermination camps in Eastern Europe. Because her father had a British passport, they were assigned to be exchanged for Germans held by the Allies. Instead of being sent east, the family was deported to Bergen-Belsen. In April 1945, Rebecca and her family were put on a train but the train was bombed. A few days later, they were liberated. Rebecca returned to Amsterdam and immigrated to Israel in 1959. Zvi Gill was born in 1928 in Zduriska Wola, Poland. In 1942 his father and brothers were taken to the gas trucks in Chelmno, while Zvi and his mother were transported in cattle cars to the Lodz ghetto. Deported to Auschwitz in 1944, he was sent to a forced labor camp and then to Dachau. He collapsed during forced labor in a heavy snowstorm but was saved by an older German guard. He arrived in Israel in 1945, fought in the War of Independence, and became a senior journalist with the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Olga Kay was born in 1926 in Ujfeherto, Hungary. In May 1944, her family was deported to Auschwitz, where most of the family went straight to the gas chambers, while she and her sister Eva were sent to work. In July they were sent to the Kaufering concentration camp in Germany and in November were transferred to Bergen-Belsen. When she was liberated on April 15, 1945, she weighed 55 pounds. In 1985, Olga immigrated from the U.S. to Israel. Arie Shilansky was born in 1928 in Siauliai, Lithuania. In June 1941, the Germans invaded and a few weeks later, the family was imprisoned in a ghetto. In November 1943, most of the children were taken away while their parents were at work, while Arie hid in a factory. In July 1944 he was sent to the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland, then to a sub-camp of Dachau in Germany, and was liberated in May 1945. In 1948, he immigrated to Israel and fought in the War of Independence. Shaul Spielmann was born in 1931 in Vienna, Austria. In September 1942, the family was sent to the Terezin ghetto and in November 1943, they were deported to Auschwitz. Shaul's name was on the list of prisoners destined for extermination, but his father Benno, who worked in the camp office as a registrar, moved it to a list of older boys, thus saving him from death. In January 1945, Shaul and the other prisoners were forced on a death march. "We walked in forests, on paths strewn with corpses. At night, the prisoners lay on the ground in the frost; by morning, some had frozen to death." After liberation he immigrated to Israel and fought in the War of Independence and subsequent Israeli wars. He worked in Magen David Adom, saving many lives.
2022-04-28 00:00:00
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