1 minute read

Remember Stories to

Middle School commemorated Yom Hashoah with a moving program. A choir of seventh and eighth grade students sang “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” “Legacy,” and the Sh’ma. Four Middle School teachers lit candles in memory of family members who perished. Students heard from Mrs. Claire Grunfeld, a survivor of the Debrecen ghetto, the Strasshof labor camp, and the Kastner train, who shared her story and described how her belief in Hashem is what kept her alive. As an aside, several Middle School students who worked with Ms. Grunfeld in the Names, Not Numbers© program this year were all inspired by the strength she found in both family and in Hashem.

Lower School’s fourth and fifth grade students participated in a program themed “Remember Me,” a testimony to the resilience of the children who survived the Holocaust. Students were introduced to the poem “A Prayer for Children” by Ina Hughs. They watched a short film about former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak and how his mother hid him in a sack to smuggle him through the ghetto gates in Kovno, Lithuania to a local gentile farmer’s safe haven. After the film, several fifth graders

“Over the last nine months together, we have challenged ourselves to truly be present in the moments where we could not find words — moments that would have been undermined if we had tried to put language to them,” shared JBHS Director of the Arts, Drama Therapist and Witness Theater facilitator/playwright Sally Shatzkes. This was evident onstage as audience members witnessed the respectful relationships that the students and survivors developed during their time together.

TheWitnessTheaterprogramisbeing generouslysupportedthroughTheWilliam S.LevineFamilyShoahInstitute.

Witness Theater was conceived by Irit and Ezra Dagan and developed by JDC-Eshel in Israel. It was brought to New York in 2012 by Selfhelp Community Services, Inc. This year’s Witness Theater Program is a collaboration of Selfhelp, UJA-Federation of New York and Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School. The program also receives generous support from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), Carol and Carl Hess, the Miriam and Arthur Diamond Charitable Trust, and the Robert and Trudy Gottesman Philanthropic Fund put on a musical presentation. The program included the lighting of six yahrzeit candles to commemorate the six million Jews who perished in the Shoah, followed by YOF faculty member Rabbi Shilo Sharoni’s recitation of the Kel Maleh Rachamim prayer and “Hatikvah.” YOF faculty members Ms. Helen Ender and Ms. Shaindy Finkiel coordinated this impactful program.

Yom Hashoah programming is part of The William S. Levine Family Shoah Institute.

The Names, Not Numbers© ProgramisdedicatedbyDr.LawrenceA"H and Suzanne Fishman Holocaust Education Fund.

This article is from: