German Volunteers Help to Build Home for Holocaust Survivors

2010-04-13 3

As Israel marks the Holocaust Remembrance Day, dozens of German volunteers arrived to Israel to help in establishing a hostel for holocaust survivors.

88-year-old Miriam Kremin wasn’t always fond of the German people. Having fled the Nazis in 1944, memories of the Holocaust remain strong with her. But now Kremin has a newfound appreciation for the German people.

Among them, Tamariz Tzitner, an English teacher from eastern Germany. She’s one of dozens of volunteers from Germany who traveled to the Jewish state to help with the construction of a building that will soon house some 100 Holocaust survivors in the port city of Haifa.

[...]

For Tzitner, working on the project is a way to show she cares.

[Tamariz Tzitner, Volunteer]: ( Female, English)
"I feel that I want to contribute something to this place. I want to show the people here that I care and this is the reason why I came here."

The project, sponsored by the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, will soon provide assisted living in the four-story structure in Haifa… owned and operated by the charitable organization Yad Ezer Lehaver or Helping Hands to Friends, in English.

[...]

Miriam Kremin is one of hundreds of Holocaust survivors who has benefited from Yad Ezer's outreach. She fled Poland at age 16… leaving her parents behind in a ghetto that was later wiped out.

[Miriam Kremin, Holocaust Survivor] ( Female, Hebrew)
"I am a Holocaust survivor. At age 16 I fled the Ghetto with a forged identification document by a different name as a Polish Christian. I left my parents there who - within two weeks, when they carried out the termination of the Ghetto, it's called the final solution, that's called Ghetto Judenrein, no Jews were left and my parents were murdered there, too."

The Jewish state marks Holocaust Memorial Day on April 12 when the nation comes to a two-minute halt in memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.