This year’s commemoration of Yom HaShoah is particularly poignant for its timing and significance and on a very personal note also. During this ominous break in the incessant sirens connected with Israel’s war with Iran, comes another siren wailing its reminder and remembrance of another period in our not so distant past where the extermination of our Jewish nation was the preoccupation of a deranged Hitler and his collaborators.

And after watching the Holocaust Observance Program last night and hearing the stories and the extraordinary courage each of the torch bearers exhibited during the period of the Shoah, it truly struck a chord in me that our survival is and resilience is due to one factor above all – our commitment to our FAMILY in the literal and figurative sense and that is what I want to focus on in this blog.

My Own Family SHOAH Connection

After making Aliyah to Israel and observing for the first time some observances such as Yom HaShoah I took a much greater interest in that period of time so foundational to our establishment as a country. And coming from a predominant American history without a firm grasp of my European family history, I was quite surprised to discover that my connection to the Shoah was actually personal.

I was named for my great grandmother whose name was Sarah Yentie Tobolowsky – Skibelski and thanks to the records preserved by Yad Vashem, I learned that one of her children – my great grand Uncle whose name was Chaim and his wife Esther and 5 of his 10 children were murdered in the infamous Treblinka and Auschwitz concentration camps along with 2 other relatives.

Martyrdom and Rabbi Akiva’s Connection to this Period

This discovery of my own family connection to the Shoah also triggered in me a focus on other periods of our........

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