Lafayette teacher helping discover family's Jewish history

May 7—What began as a mission for one Lafayette history teacher to look into her family's connection to the Holocaust has turned into a calling in life to research and honor the lives lost in the genocide.

On Monday, Brooke Rich and her husband Alex gathered at the Governor's Mansion in Jefferson City for Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day to reflect on the millions who were killed and the countless lives changed forever by the Holocaust.

"So you light a candle for every family member that you know of that was murdered in the Holocaust," said Rich, a Lafayette High School history teacher. "We're lighting five candles because that's the five that I know of."

In the past four months, with assistance from relatives, Rich has helped make a series of remarkable and tragic discoveries about what happened to her husband's family more than 80 years ago during the Holocaust in Belarus.

Brooke Rich is married to Alexander Rich. His grandfather, Jeff Rich, is a member of the Jewish community in St. Joseph. The Rich family has been a part of the St. Joseph Jewish community since the late 1800s.

Rich's journey began when she took a trip to Europe last summer to study the Holocaust with a group of fellow teachers. She visited former concentration camp sites in Germany, Poland and Norway. It was on that trip that she made a vow to learn everything she could about the connection between her husband's family and the Holocaust.

"When I became a history teacher, I never knew that my life would be going down this path. You know, there are many dark parts of history, but the Holocaust is just one that's very personal to me now," she said. "If they're going to work that hard to eliminate 6 million people, then I need to work twice as hard to keep their memory and their story alive."

After doing some initial research, she discovered that Alex's great great grandmother, Esther Friedman, was born in Drohitchin, Belarus, and was one of 10 children born to Chaya and Maier Yudel Feldman.

Rich discovered that nearly all of Esther's family, including her parents, brother, sister, sister-in-law, and niece were forced into labor camps and murdered during the Holocaust.

"When I first started researching, I prayed that I wouldn't find any people that were killed. I didn't want it to be true and I almost didn't want to know," she said. "But then on the other hand, I had to know. I had to figure out the truth."

From reading and speaking to relatives, she learned of many emotional stories: babies ripped from their mothers' hands, repeated rounds of firing squads and other atrocities.

As her research continued, she learned that one family member of Esther, her nephew, Yankel Feldman, managed to make a harrowing escape from a labor camp in Belarus when he was just 7 years old.

Incredibly, Rich learned in March that Yankel, now 89 years old, was alive and living in Israel. He had moved around from orphanage to orphanage in the years following his escape from Belarus. During a phone conversation with Yankel's oldest daughter, Rich learned about the escape and what some of the Feldmans experienced inside the labor camps.

Fearing they would be killed, Yankel and his father, Leib, attempted to flee to the woods to evade capture in the middle of winter. While carrying an exhausted Yankel through snow on his back, Leib was wounded by Nazi gunfire and forced to make the agonizing decision to tell his son to run for the woods to avoid capture. That was the last time the two would ever see each other.

"Somehow she trusted me and it just all just came out. She had never told anyone outside of her immediate family the story before," Rich said. "To hear what actually happened to them. It was definitely a lot of tears and a lot of lost sleep."

For Rich, Monday's event in Jefferson City for Holocaust Remembrance Day was the latest effort in what's been a life-altering journey of discovery to bring to light the tragic events of the genocide.

Her journey will continue when she travels to Atlanta for professional development related to the Holocaust this summer.

Even though Rich and her husband are not Jewish, her research over the last year has helped bring her, Alex and their daughter closer to Alex's heritage and his family more than they could have ever imagined.

"Now that we've learned this story, we celebrated Hanukkah with our daughter for the first time. We celebrated Passover with our daughter for the first time," Rich said. "We're really trying to keep the culture and the tradition of his Jewish heritage alive for our daughter. And it has brought a lot of emotions."

While traveling in Europe, Rich connected with the CEO of a charity nonprofit group in London called The Together Plan. The organization was founded to help uncover information about the Holocaust in Belarus and support those impacted.

The group intends to build a large memorial in Brest, Belarus, to honor those killed during the Holocaust. More than 80 years after the Holocaust killed nearly 6 million Jewish people, families like the Feldmans may finally see a place where their relatives' names can be viewed and honored.