Local Rabbi shares his story on Holocaust Remembrance Day
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Each year, Holocaust Remembrance Day honors the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Almost 80 years since that dark time in our history, a Virginia Beach rabbi said this year is especially painful amid a surge in antisemitism.
“As we commemorate the Holocaust today, we also carry the pain of Oct. 7,” said Rabbi Israel Zoberman of Temple Lev Tikvah. “It is such a vivid reminder that the Holocaust has been revisited upon us in such a way that brings back to mind the worst chapters in Jewish history.”
It’s a history that Zoberman carries with him. In 1942, his mother was forced out of her home in western Ukraine.
“After being placed in a ghetto in which they were starved, brutalized,” Zoberman said, “they were led to the forest and the people of the town in which we lived for so long, ran after them with clubs.”
She survived the Holocaust and died last year at 103. Zoberman carries her story and those of his ancestors with him everywhere he goes.
“If we don’t remember, we are bound to repeat the past,” Zoberman said.
As he watches students rally across the country in support of Hamas, his heart aches listening to the antisemitism and harassment towards his people.
“It is so painful for Jews and others to see that so many of these students don’t know the basic facts of the Middle East, the conflict of Israel and the Arab countries,” Zoberman said. “We have already accomplished so much, peace with Egypt, with Jordan, the Abraham Accords. Hamas, the terrorist organization is holding over 100 hostages, including Holocaust survivors.”
Zoberman welcomes a conversation with those rallying for Gaza.
“Every other word in our prayer book is Shalom,” Zoberman said. “Peace, wholeness, harmony. Israel is ready to have peace. How can you have peace with someone who is killing you and says to you we will repeat Oct. 7, again and again and again?”
One-third of the entire Jewish population and 2/3 of European Jews were destroyed as a result of the Holocaust. A global demographic report released earlier this year estimates about half of the world’s Holocaust survivors live in Israel. Many are in their 80s and 90s.
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