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April 25-May 1, 2025 • Shmini • 27 Nisan 5785 • Vol. 24, No. 14
Who will speak when last survivor is gone? BETH KATZNELSON Yad Vashem
A
s Holocaust survivors pass away, so, too, fades our most powerful defense against hatred: their stories.
In a time when antisemitism is rising and historical distortion runs rampant, we must ask ourselves: Who will speak when the last witnesses are gone? I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Their experiences shaped every part of my identity and worldview. My grandfather, too haunted to speak, held his pain in silence. My grandmother, more vocal, shielded me from the full brutality of her
story, but even her carefully edited memories etched warnings into my conscience. Only after her death, when I listened to a full recording of her testimony, did I begin to grasp the scale of what she had endured while fleeing Poland as a child. Her voice trembled through the audio: “No one should know from it,” she would say. “Never again.” Her story, and those of millions more, is not just history. It is a moral call to action. We are living in a moment when that call must be answered. y children, barely teens, now ask whether they should hide their Stars of David in public. They feel the chill of a world that seems increasingly indifferent to their identity, or worse, openly hostile. The events in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were not just a geopolitical shock; it was a wake-up call for Jewish families across the globe. And yet, I am one of the fortunate ones. In my community, Holocaust education is built into the school curriculum. But I know that is the exception, not the rule. In much of the country, students graduate with little understanding of the Holocaust beyond vague timelines or numbers. They do not know the names. They have not heard the voices. That is why we must act, individually and collectively, to ensure those voices are not lost. See The last survivor on page 2
M
Kirschen, 87, was a cartoonist and more
This was published in The Jewish Star in 2015.
By Steve Linde, JNS Israeli cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen, whose iconic daily cartoons were distributed by JNS over the last several years, died at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba last week after a lengthy illness at 87. After making aliyah in 1971, the Brooklynborn Kirschen began sketching his trademark “Dry Bones” in 1973. The cartoon was internationally syndicated and published in the Jerusalem Post for 50 years. He was also a pioneer creator of animated computer games. (See an appraisal of his work in that area, on page 14.) The name of Kirschen’s comic strip referred to the biblical vision of the “Valley of Dry Bones” with its main character named Shuldig, which is Yiddish for guilty/blame.
“The cartoon started on January 1, 1973,” he once explained. “I named it Dry Bones, thinking that everyone would immediately connect the name with the ‘dry bones’ that will rise again, from the Book of Ezekiel. But the question that I get asked most often is ‘Where does the name ‘Dry Bones’ come from?’ So what I thought would be most obvious was not obvious at all.” A member of both the US National Cartoonists Society and the Israeli Cartoonists Society, Kirschen won several awards and was considered a “national treasure of the Jewish people.” Among the prizes he received were the Israeli Museum of Caricature and Comics’ Golden Pencil Award and the 2014 Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize for his contribution to Israeli culture and the arts. He is survived by his artist wife, Sali.
Rep. Grace Meng with Holocaust survivor Hanna Slome and Nick Winton at Slome’s 100th birthday celebration in Flushing. Winton’s father saved Slome and 668 other children aboard the Kindertransport in 1939.
Meng salutes a survivor centenarian Rep. Grace Meng visited 100-year-old Shoah survivor Hanna Slome at Sloane’s home in Flushing, bringing with her a proclamation declaring Slome’s birthday “Hanna Slome Day” in the Sixth Congressional District. Slome, a Czechoslovakia native, was whisked from Nazi persecution to a new home in England aboard the Kindertransport in 1939. Nick Winton, the son of Kindertransport organizer Sir Nicholas Winton, visited Slome with Meng. Slome immigrated to the United States at 19, settled in New York City and later married, becoming a mother to two, grandmother of seven and greatgrandmother to 10 children. The survivor has spoken to school groups about her life during and after the Holocaust and was active at Flushing’s Temple Gates of Prayer Congregation Shaarai Tefilla, a Conservative synagogue. “I am proud to commend and recognize Hanna for a century of courage, service and inspiration,” the congresswoman said. “Her message of resilience and hope continues to inspire generations and will do so for many years to come.”