Ben Porat Yosef junior high students participated in Unity Week, during which the students commemorated the Holocaust on Yom HaShoah. On May 3,,the program kicked off with an inspiring shiur by Rabbi Ysoscher Katz titled “The Power of Speech,” a topic that was to be part of the theme of BPY’s Yom HaShoah observance. Rabbi Katz spoke about connecting to Hashem through one’s interactions with others and how one’s interpersonal relationships can create kedusha. The tone was, thereby, set for the week’s studies and activities.

On May 4, in advance of Yom HaShoah, older students heard firsthand accounts from Holocaust survivors about their wartime experiences. Fifth graders spoke with Dr. Norbert Bikales who escaped from Berlin to France on a kindertransport when he was ten years old. In France he was hidden by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE), eventually reaching the United States in 1946 when he was seventeen years old. Junior high students heard from Mrs. Asia Shindelman, who spoke about her family’s experience as Lithuanian Jews who were sent to the Jewish ghetto in Shauliai and then to the Shtutthof concentration camp in Germany. The students were moved by these historical accounts.

On Friday, May 6, with the culmination of Unity Week activities, seventh and eighth grade students created an interactive Unity Museum and original multimedia dramatic production through collaborative projects focusing on “The Power of Speech,” part of the Ida Wider “Maintaining a Caring Community Holocaust Studies program” at BPY.