On Saturday, the world marked the first International Holocaust Remembrance Day since Hamas brutally attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. There are approximately 245,000 Holocaust survivors alive today — 49% of whom are in Israel, according to a new demographic report by Claims Conference.
Elderly Israeli survivors have a direct connection to October 7 and its aftermath. Some have lost loved ones. Some are waiting in agony for their abducted relatives to return home. Some have been moved.
Some even became hostages themselves, like Yaffa Adar, 85 years old who was released from captivity at the end of November.
“Everyone in Israel is deeply affected, and the survivors even more so,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, which helps survivors with financial compensation. “October 7 brings back the trauma from the beginning of their lives, until now, as they approach the end of their lives. Reliving their childhood trauma is heartbreaking.”
Taylor remembers one survivor telling him: “I grew up in war, and I’m going to die in war.”
The Post spoke to Holocaust survivors shocked that the genocide of Jews could happen again.
‘Like a second Holocaust’
“The only thing that keeps me going is the hope that I’ll see him,” Wenkert said of his grandson. With respect from Tsili Wenkert
The rhythm of life today punishes 82-year-old Tsili Wenkert who, as a young girl, experienced the dangerous Ukrainian ghetto and saw relatives killed.
His grandson Omer Wenkert was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7 from the Nova music festival and has not been heard from since.
The last image he saw of his eldest grandson was a Hamas video showing the 22-year-old stripped to his underwear and tied to the back of a pickup truck surrounded by screaming armed terrorists.
“When I saw the video, I thought I would stay in the chair forever,” Tsili said. “It is unimaginable for grandparents to see. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope that I will see him.”
Wenkert at Disney World with his grandson Omer Wenkert, as a child. With respect from Tsili Wenkert
He called October 7 “like a second Holocaust – but worse,” he said. In fact, he added, it’s both a blessing and a curse to “see videos and hear testimonies from people who have been kidnapped.”
Born in Romania in 1941, Tsili Dia recalls on his way to Auschwitz when he was rescued by the Russian Red Army.
Running for cover as rockets flew over his home in central Gedera on October 7, sending Tsili back to his painful childhood, when his mother would cradle him as Nazi planes bombed from above.
Now, he has nightmares about his grandson trapped in the Gaza tunnels.
He was also haunted, but “not surprised” by the stirrings of antisemitism.
“What happened in Israel could happen anywhere else in the world,” said Wenkert, who saw relatives killed during the Holocaust. AFP via Getty Images
“It’s the same old antisemitism from that time,” he said. “It’s antisemitism masquerading as anti-zionism, but we all know what it really is.”
He warns of what can happen when the world turns away from evil.
“What’s happening in Israel can happen anywhere else in the world — they won’t be happy to stop with just the Jews,” he said of radical Islam. “It’s like Israel is at the forefront of preventing radical terrorists from reaching the rest of the world.”
“We all said, ‘Not again.’ Well, it happened again”
Lucy Lipiner said the attack on October 7 reminded her of fleeing the Nazis when she was young. Courtesy of Lucy Lipiner
Lucy Lipiner, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor from Poland, called New York City home from 1949 until last September, when she moved to Tel Aviv a few weeks before October 7.
That day, when Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system went off, she ran with her little dog, Biji, to the ground floor of her apartment building.
The attack triggered traumatic memories, like those of years on the run as a child fleeing the Nazis. He recalls trekking, sometimes barefoot, through Siberia and Tajikistan. Originally named Sara, which was changed to Lucy when she was a child to hide her Jewishness.
“I didn’t have a childhood — it was stolen from me,” Lipiner told The Post. “I didn’t have a childhood — it was stolen from me,” Lipiner told The Post. He lived through a 10-year flight to freedom,” including time in a displaced persons camp until arriving in the US at age 16.
As a girl during the Holocaust, Lucy Lipiner (dressed in black with a white collar) lived in an orphanage in Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy of Lucy Lipiner
“We all said, ‘Not again.’ Well, it happened again,” he raged.
At least 17 members of Lipiner’s family were killed during the Holocaust, and she has shared her memories in her memoir “Long Journey Home: A Young Girl’s Memoir Surviving the Holocaust.”
“The Holocaust happened because good people remained silent,” Lipiner said. “October 7 was a one-day Holocaust and people need to understand that.”
The retired licensed occupational therapist refuses to stay quiet and has gone to X, where she has more than 31,000 followersto explain that Hamas not only wants to kill Jews but to “destroy western civilization.”‘
Lucy Lipiner around 1942 or 1943, when her family fled to Tajikistan to escape persecution. Courtesy of Lucy Lipiner
“The world is so quick to kill the Jews but is always ashamed to admit it. First, you deny the Holocaust. Then, you deny the killing of Hamas. Unfortunately for you, I have witnessed both and I will tell the truth” he wrote on X.
Lipiner said he had encountered many “trolls” who sent death threats, denied the Holocaust and accused him of genocide.
“They said mean things to me, like, ‘Old woman, dead already,’” said Lipiner, adding that he reassured his family: “Don’t worry. I survived the Holocaust, I have a very thick skin. I need to educate people.”
Watching brazen displays of antisemitism around the world, including the vandalism of Jewish businesses, Lipiner said he feels safer in Israel than in New York City, which he has called home for 74 years.
Lipiner has more than 30,000 followers on X, where he regularly tweets his views on the world. Courtesy of Lucy Lipiner
“I worry about Jews all over the world, including NYC. I don’t know if the men can risk leaving the house with their kippahs [yarmulke head covering] — they are vulnerable.
“In a way, I hope I don’t live long enough to see this,” he added. “But God wanted me to be here.”
‘I will show them what it means to exterminate the Jews’
Born in France in the turmoil of World War II some 83 years ago, Yaakov Weissmann escaped Nazi persecution by hiding with a non-Jewish French family.
As a child in France, Yaakov Weissmann escaped Nazi persecution by hiding with a non-Jewish French family. Courtesy of Yaakov Weissmann
He awoke that day in his Gaza border kibbutz, Netiv HaAsara, to a shower of rockets – a refuge for terrorists to storm the kibbutz and unleash a barrage of machine gunfire. The instructions among his neighbors were clear: “Whoever has a weapon, take it out of the safe.” Everyone is responsible for protecting themselves.”
He has now been evacuated and is living in a temporary shelter after his kibbutz was evacuated.
“I had a sad and horrible childhood – but I am convinced that it built me a strong character to overcome the difficulties that came my way,” said the Holocaust survivor. “On October 7, I said to myself, ‘You have the strength to get through this.'”
After being hunted during the Holocaust, Weissmann understood the nature of self-reliance. “You know you can be attacked at any moment and that’s a lot of adrenaline,” he said. “It all boils down to how to defend yourself as quickly as possible and for as long as possible.”
When the October 7 attack happened, Weissmann said he was ready to fight back. Courtesy of Yaakov Weissmann
Twenty members of his community were killed.
Weissmann never knew his father, who died of medical complications after escaping Auschwitz. He admits that, as a young man, he meditated on his “revenge against the Nazis.
“They want to exterminate the Jews, so I will show them what it is to exterminate the Jews,” he remembers telling himself. “I will build a family in the hope that there will be a dynasty.”
Weissman fulfilled his “revenge,” becoming a father of three, grandfather of 10 and great-grandfather of four, all of whom lived on a kibbutz and survived Hamas attacks.
Still, he worries about his family’s future: “You see more and more people blaming Jews for the world’s problems.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
