FEATURE STORY
THE LAST OF KIN BY LYNN FELDMAN
O
n Mount Herzl in Israel, a monument which looks a bit like a broken home commemorates 167 Holocaust survivors who died fighting for Israel’s right to exist. These men and women had lost everything. With no family left, they fought for Israel’s independence knowing that if they themselves did not survive this fight, there would no longer be a living trace of their families. They are called the Last of Kin. On a warm spring day, I am leading a tour that starts in the Valley of the Communities at Yad Vashem. In this 2.5 acre monument dug out of the natural bedrock, the Jewish communities that were destroyed in the Holocaust are commemorated. The Holocaust changed not only the face of Europe, it changed forever the Jewish world. We will be walking from here to the Monument to the Last of Kin on Mount Herzl. This path represents the length and breadth of Israeli memory. Leaving the Valley of Communities, we leave behind the Jewish communities of Europe. As we climb up the Mount of Remembrance, we pass a cattle car on a train track to nowhere. The car pierces through the Jerusalem mountains, coming to its final resting place in this quiet spot after carrying countless Jews to their death or forced labor. We continue to Uprising Square and Natan Rappaport’s Warsaw Ghetto Uprising monument. It is nearly identical to the one in Warsaw, except that this monument has two images side by side. A sculpture depicting the hardship of the ghetto is connected to the uprising sculpture with the words of the prophet Ezekiel: “In thy blood, live.”
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L’CHAIM SAN DIEGO MAGAZINE • MAY 2022
Adam Halperin was born in Warsaw Poland. As a boy, he joined the Revisionist Zionist youth movement, Beitar. When the Nazis invade Poland, Adam was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. In the ghetto, Adam was one of the founders of Żydowski Związek Wojskowy or ZZW, the Revisionist underground movement. On April 20, 1943, the second day of the uprising, Adam took a post in Marovska Street. Within hours, he was captured by the Germans and sent to Treblinka in a cattle car just like the one we passed earlier. Adam jumped off the train and escaped into a forest where he joined a group of Jewish Partisans. But this is not the end of Adam’s story. We will meet Adam again on this tour. As we leave the Uprising Square, heading towards the great iron gates of Yad Vashem, we transition from Europe to Israel, walking through the gate and turning towards the path that will lead us up to Mount Herzl. The path we are going to walk was constructed by hand by members of Israeli Youth movements, connecting the two parts of the Remembrance Mountain: Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust, and Mount Herzl, the memorial to Israel’s defenders. Along the path, we pass panels that describe the events in “Yeshuv” (Israel) during the war years. Photos and text depict snapshots of the main events of the struggle to end British rule, including the bombing of the Allenby bridge and the building of new towns. We climb up the mountain, walking the path of Israeli history. While Europe was at war, in the Yeshuv a new chapter was beginning. Three Jewish organizations - Hagana, Etzel and Lechi - struggled against British rule. One of the main avenues of resistance was a
