Ever since the installment of the Holocaust Memorial Sculpture Garden at the Moriah School in Englewood in 1994, the students passing by were made aware of this dark period in Jewish history. As they advanced through the grades, the background of the Shoah was shared with them age-appropriately. Fifty sculptures, composites of bronze and Jerusalem stone, are embedded into the sunken courtyard, each containing a cast bronze chime within their hollowed interior. These chimes are activated yearly in commemoration of Yom HaShoah. They came to be symbols of the souls of the 1.5 million children whose lives were snuffed out during the Holocaust.
Marking Yom HaShoah at Moriah is a well-planned and serious endeavor. This year, the anniversary was marked meaningfully over a two-day period. The planning for the commemoration was months in the making. Art teacher Gila Bretter began her preparations in the fall. Inspired by the brochure produced by Yad Vashem, “Spots of Light: To Be a Woman in the Holocaust,” Bretter and her daughter living in Israel created a moving video highlighting the passion and valor of mothers, sisters and all female victims of the Holocaust in the face of Nazi brutality. The video served as a launching point and inspiration for eighth grade students who volunteered to create artwork portraying this outstanding courage. A group of 18 eighth-graders devoted after-school hours for months to creating artwork, paintings and sculpture, each conveying their message of the women’s unique physical and spiritual strength. Pictures of the artwork were attached to the Bretter video, which was shown at the Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration on April 23 at Bergenfield High School, to an audience of over 500.
At Moriah, the paintings were displayed on easels around the periphery of the shul. In the center of the room was a long table displaying Bretter’s own artwork “From Sole to Soul: A Tribute to the Women of the Holocaust.”
Consisting of a row of worn shoes from whose battered insides butterflies emerge, the work symbolizes transformation, resilience and freedom. The piece is a testimony to the strength and resistance that these peerless women wove into their lullabies and acts of love and kindness shown to the children. Strewn alongside the shoes were shards of ceramics salvaged from the burned home of artist Bilha Yinon, member of Kibbutz HaAsara, who was killed alongside her husband on Oct. 7, 2023. The shards were collected with the permission of the Yinon family and brought to Moriah by residents of Englewood. They were interspersed among smooth rocks representing the hope for a smooth future.
The actual Yom HaShoah commemoration began at Moriah on Wednesday, April 22, when Middle School Principal Tzipporah Boim hosted eighth grade students from the Walter T. Bergen Middle School. As they had done earlier in the year marking Kristallnacht, these students sat side by side with the Moriah eighth graders to connect in an important conversation regarding antisemitism and Yom HaShoah.
The combined students heard firsthand testimony from 90+-year-old survivor Miriam Edelstein, who informed them of their responsibility upon becoming the last witnesses to hear from actual survivors. She told them of her family’s hazardous journey from Poland to Siberia, where they suffered great deprivations during the war years. She told them of the tremendous animosity they confronted upon returning home to Poland after liberation and the warning signs of hatred that we see even today.
The students were then divided into two groups, one escorted into the shul with Rachel Schwartz, coordinator of the Holocaust program, and Bretter, to view the art exhibit and interview the student artists standing alongside their works. They were given worksheets on which to record their reactions and connections to their own life experiences. The second group was escorted to the Holocaust Sculpture Garden with Boim to view the sculptures ranging in size to represent the varying ages of the children caught up in the Shoah. There, Boim read the iconic poem “The Butterfly” by Pavel Friedman, a 13-year old Holocaust victim who perished in Auschwitz and whose poem has become representative of all child victims of the Holocaust. In a current and painful connection, Boim showed the students the picture of 4-year-old Ariel Bibas, HY”D, viciously murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, together with his mother, Shiri, and infant brother, Kfir. Ariel’s red hair was the inspiration for the change of name of the spotted orange butterfly, the Kitmit Yerushalayim, to the Kitmit Ariel in his memory by the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Israel. Sadly, the eighth-graders from the Walter T. Bergen School had not heard of Ariel Bibas before this program as opposed to the Moriah students, who were most aware. Boim commented, “This is a sign that some people need to listen harder, while others need to speak more loudly about the injustices of our world.”
On Thursday, April 23, the Moriah Middle School students began their day by reciting the Mishnayot that they had learned in preparation for Yom HaShoah and their relevance to the day’s commemoration. A yahrzeit candle was lit following each recitation. The sixth and seventh graders were then guided into the shul art exhibit and were able to interview the eighth grade student artists about their work. A booklet containing all of the student artwork was distributed to the artists and students as a keepsake of the meaningful marking of Yom HaShoah at Moriah in 2025.
