Each year, on the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews around the world visit the graves of their family members to honor their memories. For many Holocaust survivors and their families, there are no graves to visit. 

Though this absence of place cannot be filled, JCRC and our partners host a Yizkor Service for our community’s local survivors and their families, a program that includes survivor testimony and the lighting of memorial candles to remember those in the survivor community who have passed away over the last year. We have gathered every year on the Brandeis campus since 1967, when a monument entitled “Job,” was dedicated there to honor the Six Million. 

This is a sacred space for survivors and their families. A place where they come together to mourn and to honor their family. The sculpture is inscribed with a plaque from the Jewish Holocaust survivors in Boston to honor the memory of those who were sacrificed. The table below the sculpture is inscribed with a verse from Lamentations 3:48: “My eyes shed streams of water over the ruin of my poor people.”

For the past two years, COVID has prevented us from gathering for Yizkor in person. This year, we are finally able to be together again with survivors and their families at the statue. We will hear remarks from survivor Magda Bader (pictured here with Governor Baker), who will tell her story of escaping Auschwitz at age 15.

We will come together to remember those survivors and second-generation survivors we have lost this past year: Harvey Lewin, Alan Kronenberg, Rachael Kot-Lewis, Israel Arbeiter, Lester Izbicki, Nathaniel Jeff Resnick, Fred Manasse, Monique Stern, and Aron Greenfield. May their memories be a blessing.

We hope you’ll join us this Sunday, October 2nd at 11:00am at the Berlin Chapel at the Statue of Job at Brandeis University. The end of the time when we will be able to hear first-hand survivor testimony looms, making ceremonies like these more important now than ever.

JCRC is honored to spearhead this annual event and to continue this important work by re-launching our in-person guided tours at the New England Holocaust Memorial.

Following Yizkor, we’ll be training a new group of 15 docents, including both 2G’s and 3G’s, who will continue to carry on the legacy of our survivors.

As long as there are survivors who walk amongst us, we will continue to make space for their testimony, and honor those we have lost.

Shabbat Shalom and G’mar chatima tovah,

Jeremy

Join ADL on October 30 for presentations from leading experts on antisemitism and skill-building workshops for adults, students, and families. Participants will leave with an actionable toolkit for confronting antisemitism.