Holocaust

A couple videos from Rabbi Lau’s visit

Posted in Holocaust, Uncategorized on November 5th, 2012 by admin – Be the first to comment

In August we held a 70 year commemoration in honor of 27,000 Jews killed by the Nazis. Here are a couple videos from the event:

March of the Living

Rabbi Lau telling the story about his time in Buchenwald and the person who saved his life:

Marching on Rostov With Israel’s Chief Rabbi

Posted in Holocaust on September 5th, 2012 by admin – Be the first to comment

Five hundred Jews, many wearing armbands with the Star of David, marched on Rostov-on-Don yesterday, August 12, in remembrance of the Zmievskaya Balka massacre. The men, women and youth followed the same route that the Jews of Rostov were forced by the Nazis to march on August 11-12 in 1942 where 27,000 people, among them also Soviet citizens, were murdered at a ravine on the edge of the city.

Rostov residents and family members of those murdered mark their loved ones’ deaths at a memorial ceremony here every year. This year, in honor of the 70th memorial, the city’s Jewish community under the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch of Rostov’s Rabbi Chaim Danzinger organized a march, the first such march in Russia.

In an unusual display of Jewish identity for local Jews, many sporting yarmulkes, walked proudly through Rostov, where traffic was diverted and a police escort accompanied the marchers.

Many spoke painfully of their loved ones who were murdered here, but none could miss the triumphant fact that leading the march on Zmievskaya Balka was Israel’s Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau—the most unlikely survivor of Hitler’s “final solution.” Rabbi Lau was a five year old when he outwitted the Nazis and became an inmate in Buchenwald, where there were no children, and survived in defiance of all odds to become Israel’s chief rabbi.

“In one of the rooms where Jews were tortured in Buchenwald,” recalled Rabbi Lau, “a Jew scraped the word ‘revenge’ into the wall. What does it mean? Are we going to fight? Will we wage war? Our revenge is to live and follow the Jewish traditions and to give birth to Jewish people. ” Rabbi Lau recited the kaddish at the memorial site, and the Kel Maleh Rachamim prayer.

On Friday, Rabbi Lau visited the burial place of Feodore Mikhailichenko and offered a prayer over the grave of the non-Jewish prisoner who took little Lulek, as Rabbi Lau was called, under his guardianship in Buchenwald, and saved his life.

As he recounts in his book, Out of the Depths, Rabbi Lau had long searched for Mikhailichenko but had no success tracking him down. Then, in 2008, through a series of fortunate events, he established contact with Mikhailichenko’s two daughters in Rostov. To his great regret, their father was no longer alive, but Rabbi Lau recommended that he be granted the title of Righteous Among the Gentiles in Yad Vashem, Jeruslaem’s Holocaust museum and invited his daughters to Israel, where he met them for the first time. Now the Chief Rabbi of Israel came to Rostov to pay his respects and express his gratitude once again.

While in Rostov, Rabbi Lau visited both the home and the burial place of Rabbi Sholom Dov Ber 1860-1920, the fifth Rebbe of Chabad. Israel’s Chief Rabbi and his wife spent Shabbat with Chabad of Rostov.

At least 200 people came to the synagogue to hear Rabbi Lau speak. “He inspired listeners to become involved and engaged in Jewish life,” said Rabbi Danzinger. Rabbi Lau noted that the shul, known as the”Soldatski Synagogue” or the “soldiers’ shul, was built by Jewish soldiers (cantonists) who were forcibly taken away from their homes at the age of 10 to serve the Czar, and remained in his service for about 25 years.

“If after serving for 25 years they were able to build a shul and continue Jewish traditions, imagine the responsibility we have to keep Jewish traditions alive, ensure our children a Jewish education, a brit, a bar mitzvah, kosher observance and Jewish marriages.”

Rabbi Lau Visits his Rescuers Grave

Posted in Holocaust on September 5th, 2012 by admin – Be the first to comment
The chief rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Meir Lau,  visited the grave of Feodor Mikhailchenko - a Russian non-Jew who saved Lau from extermination at the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp during the Second World War. Rabbi Lau was then just 5 years old when he and millions of others were swept up in the Holocaust.
Visiting Rostov, Russia, on August 10, Rabbi Lau participated in a march that commemorated the 70th anniversary of a death march in Rostov in which Germany’s National Socialist forces murdered more than 27,000 people, Jews and Gentiles together. The rabbi had visited Mikhailchenko’s surviving daughters in 2008, after years of failing to connect with the heroic rescuer.
Rabbi Lau also prayed at the grave of Rabbi Sholom DovBer, the fifth Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Judaism. During Sabbath services at the Chabad of Rostov , Rabbi Lau “inspired listeners to become involved and engaged in Jewish life,” according to Rabbi Chaim Danzinger, head of the local Chabad center.

 

Mikhailchenko is numbered among the Righteous at the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel. Sent to forced labor in Germany during the war, he was 16 years old when he was arrested by the Gestapo in November 1943, charged with robbery and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he became prisoner #35692. There he joined a Communist resistance network which was led by German political prisoners. These prisoners managed to convince the Nazi camp commandant to set up a special childrens’ barrack – “Block 8″ – that accommodated youngsters who had been sent to Germany for forced labor. Mikhailichenko was put in this barrack.
In winter 1944-45 the concentration camps in the East were evacuated in the face of the advancing Red Army. Tens of thousands of inmates were marched westward in the so-called “death marches”. A significant number of the survivors were Jewish children who had somehow managed thus far to survive. Among these children was eight-year-old Yisrael Meir Lau and his elder brother Shmuel. Their parents had already been murdered by the Nazis, and it was Shmuel who carried his little brother carefully hidden in a bag that he carried on his back. They arrived in Buchenwald early in 1945 as the tides of war had turned for the Nazis.
Rabbi Lau credits Mikhailchenko with saving him. In his book, Do Not Raise Your Hand Against the Boy, the rabbi said that Mikhailchenko stole food and cooked it for him despite the danger of being caught and then executed by the pitiless Nazis. The Russian protected the boy from the freezing cold as well. ”Feodor, the Russian, looked after me in the daily life like a father would for a son. His concern and feeling of responsibility gave me a sense of security …”  When the American liberators came to the camp on April 11, 1945, Feodor held him close to him and sheltered him with his body. It was a day Lau described as his “rebirth.”
Rabbi Lau never again saw Mikhailchenko, but did not forget him. Several attempts to contact Mikhailchenko failed. Rabbi Lau only knew his first name and the fact that he came from Rostov. It was 63 years after the events, when Rabbi Lau had been appointed chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, that he was able to track down Mikhailchenko’s survivors. With the help of Prof. Kenneth Waltzer of Michigan State University, he had managed to identify Mikhailchenko. He had already passed away, but his daughters remained. Mikhailchenko died in 1993 at the age of 66. It was in 2009 that he was inducted into the rolls of the Righteous for his heroism.

 

Launch of Holocaust Project to Remember 27,000 Victims

Posted in Holocaust on June 9th, 2010 by admin – Be the first to comment

The Jewish Community of Rostov has launched a Holocaust Memorial Project to commemorate the 27,000 Jews killed in a mass grave at Zmievskaya Balka in Rostov. Other famous locations of Nazi genocides are well documented, like the well-known forest of Babi Yar. The Rostov massacre was somehow overlooked while piecing together the tragedies that befell our people in that dark time, and we don’t want the names of those innocent victims to be forgotten. We are currently gathering names, stories and photos to be included in an extensive multilingual memorial website.

This project was initiated by Mr. Yuri Dombrovsky from Moscow, who is also generously funding it. This initiative comes shortly after the memorial service held at Zmievskaya Balka attended by students of  the Or Avner Jewish Day School and by community members.

During the memorial event Rabbi Chaim Danzinger said “This year the world celebrates 65 years since the defeat of the Nazis. Den Pobedi (Victory Day in Russian) is not only an event which took place 65 years ago, rather it’s an ongoing victory which is taking place every single day. Every time we visit the synagogue, every time we light shabbat candles or celebrate Jewish holidays and traditions, we are defeating the Nazis!”.

To learn more about this project please visit: www.RememberingRostov.com.