In honor of Yom HaShoah, Shalhevet created a beautiful program to memorialize and commemorate those who suffered the tragic ordeal. The program began as the students stood for a moment of silence to pay their respects. Tamar Beer, an 11th-grade poet, recited the poem “The Last Butterfly,” written by Pavel Friedman, a Czechoslovakian Jew who perished in the Holocaust. Following the recitation of the beautifully written poem, each class was led single-file through the ballroom, which was set up as a memorial. The lights were dimmed and candles reflected over 40 posters depicting the tragedies of the Holocaust. The posters displayed a timeline of what occurred and included pictures and anecdotes. Students read and internalized the calamities and horrors as they made their way through the room.

The students followed the posters up to the sanctuary where they listened to Mrs. Estee Herskovic and Dr. Herb Pasternak, siblings whose father had lived through the Holocaust. They shared his stories, triumphs, and lessons that they learned from him. They told over the story of how he cut a hole in the bottom of the train to escape and spoke in awe and admiration as they shared how he kept returning to save his sisters and was finally able to hide them in the basement of someone’s house. They relayed how he became the head of police at a displaced-persons camp in Ukraine, and lied to the generals in order to leave for a day to go skiing. Their father was tough, positive, and determined to survive. He emerged from the catastrophe with high spirits and, along with his wife, built a strong and beautiful family based on Torah values. Each student was inspired and moved by their stories and events that transpired.

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