Posted on 04/23/25
Jerusalem, Israel - April 22, 2025 - Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day will be observed this year from Wednesday evening, April 23, through Thursday, April 24. The official state opening ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day will take place on Wednesday, April 23 at 8 pm (20:00) in Yad Vashem's Warsaw Ghetto Square on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. Israel’s President H.E. Mr. Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister H.E. Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu will both deliver remarks at the opening ceremony. Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan will kindle the Memorial Torch.
During the ceremony, Holocaust survivors will light six torches. First torch: Arie Durst; second torch: Monika Barzel; third torch: Felix Sorin; fourth torch: Rachel Katz; fifth torch: Arie Reiter ; sixth torch: Gad Fartouk. Survivors' remarks will be made by Eva Erben and Holocaust survivor Yehuda Hauptman will recite El Maleh Rahamim, a prayer for the souls of the martyrs. Their individual stories are included below.
Images of this years torch lighters can be downloaded through the following link: https://we.tl/t-6ryfvh7NoH
During the ceremony, short videos about each of the torch lighters will be shown. These videos, produced and directed by Eli Levy, will be available on the Yad Vashem website in the section dedicated to Holocaust Martyrs' & Heroes' Remembrance Day 2025, along with further information on this year's theme, "Out of the Depths: The Anguish of Liberation and Rebirth."
The opening ceremony will last approximately 90 minutes.
Torch lighters: Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2025
Arie Durst:
Arie (Leopold) Durst was born in 1933 in Lwów, Poland (today Ukraine). His brother Marian was born in 1939, the same year Lwów was occupied by the Soviet Union.
In 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, occupying Lwów. In the wake of the German occupation, many family members came to live with the Dursts. Arie’s father was drafted as a doctor in the Red Army. His uncle, Marek Mayer, obtained an essential worker’s permit, protecting him from German persecution.
During the Aktionen, Arie and his mother would hide in the potato and coal cellar in the home of Kasia, a non-Jewish woman who had previously been Arie’s nanny. Marian, Arie’s younger brother, lived under an assumed identity with Marek Mayer, posing as his child since he couldn’t be expected to keep quiet in hiding at such a young age.
In one of the Aktionen, Marian Durst was taken and murdered, as were all the members of the Mayer family apart from Marek himself. Arie’s mother Salomea obtained forged papers for herself and Arie and arranged to move to Warsaw. She hired the services of a Pole to accompany them, as a mother and son traveling alone would raise suspicion. Once in Warsaw, Salomea rented a room in the apartment of a French widow, who told all inquirers that her tenants were Polish Catholics. Bringing Arie up as a Catholic, the widow took him to church every Sunday and taught him the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Arie inspired the establishment of the Adi organization for organ donation in Israel, and he worked tirelessly to increase awareness regarding the importance of organ donation. He initiated new techniques and procedures in surgery, as well as in the treatment of wounded and cancer patients. He was a senior surgeon and a company commander, and was one of the founders of the IDF medical corps field hospitals.
Arie and Rimona have three children and eight grandchildren.
Monika Barzel:
Monika Barzel was born in 1937 in Berlin. Her father, Eugen, was a doctor, and her mother, Edith, worked as a surgical nurse. Eugen escaped to England, and Edith had to work long hours at the Jewish hospital in Berlin to support the family, so Monika’s grandmother, Gertrud, raised her. All three lived in one room in an apartment block in Berlin. Due to her ever-present hunger, most of Monika’s early memories focus on food.
When the deportations began in late 1941, Jewish patients whose condition had improved were sent from the hospital to the extermination camps. In an effort to avoid this fate, the doctors and nurses withheld drugs and treatment from the patients, hoping to save their lives. They acted in the full knowledge that, should they be found out, they would be deported along with the patients.
In September 1942, Gertrud was deported to Theresienstadt, where she was murdered. Monika was forced to live with her mother at the hospital, along with the children of four other doctors. From that time until liberation, Monika passed her days at the hospital with no schedule or framework. The nurses and patients were her only friends.
In late February 1943, the Fabrik (Factory) Aktion in Berlin saw the roundup and deportation of Jewish forced laborers to Auschwitz, in order to empty Berlin of Jews. In May, the Gestapo ordered Walter Lustig, the director of the Jewish hospital, to downsize his staff. He was forced to choose 300 people, who were then deported to Auschwitz. Monika boarded the train, but was later told to get off.
Monika contracted diphtheria and other diseases, but she recuperated despite the lack of treatment. She passed an entire winter in her room because she didn’t have shoes to wear. From 1944, she spent many nights in shelters due to the bombing of Berlin. She often had to make her way to the shelter alone as her mother was working. From time to time, she slipped on the steep stairs in the darkness and fell into the cellar.
Monika stayed in the hospital until the end of the war. When the Red Army liberated the facility, hundreds of Jews were still alive there. Aware of the murderous and violent tendencies of the Red Army soldiers, the survivors were gripped by fear, even during the liberation period. After liberation, Edith and Monika left Berlin for Sweden and then traveled to London. Edith married Rudi Friedman, a Holocaust survivor from Berlin, and they had a son. Rudy raised Monika as his own daughter.
Monika completed her dentistry studies in London and immigrated to Israel in 1963. She settled in Kibbutz Kfar Hanassi on the Syrian border with her husband, Alan, and found herself back in bomb shelters during the Six-Day War. Monika worked as a dentist in the Upper Galilee, and then around the country—from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Eilat in the south—until she reached the age of 70. Alan succumbed to cancer at age 59. Despite the emotional strain, Monika continued to work and volunteer.
Monika and Alan z”l have two children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Felix Sorin:
Felix Sorin was born in 1932 in the city of Mogilev, Byelorussia, to Frida and Natan, the youngest of their three children. Natan was a tailor by trade and a communist activist, but despite his political leanings, the family spoke Yiddish at home and observed the Jewish holidays.
In 1939, the Soviets entered Eastern Poland. Natan was sent to Oszmiana for work, so the family moved there with him.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the Sorins fled eastward. In the ensuing chaos, Felix was separated from his family and was left alone in German-occupied territory, where a stranger advised him not to reveal his Jewish identity or his father’s communist activism.
Felix roamed from place to place until he reached Minsk, where he was incarcerated in the ghetto and witnessed the murder of Jews. He escaped, and upon arrest, passed himself off as a Russian orphan and was sent to an orphanage. Several months later, he was suspected of being Jewish and was sent to Minsk to stand before a committee. At the hearing, he insisted that he wasn’t Jewish, his claim corroborated by the fact that he was uncircumcised. Committee member Vasily Orlov supported his case, and the committee secretary, who knew Felix, did not expose his true identity. After the war, Orlov was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
Felix was returned to the orphanage and did not reveal his identity until the Red Army liberated the region in the summer of 1944. In the last months of the occupation, the Germans evacuated young boys to Germany for forced labor, but Felix escaped from the orphanage and evaded deportation.
After liberation, Felix feared that no one in his family had survived. The director of the orphanage suggested that he register as a Russian, but he insisted on registering as a Jew, stating that this was his real identity. He also hoped that this would help his parents locate him, should they still be alive. He was advised by the orphanage to contact the authorities for assistance in finding his parents, and in this way, he received notification that his father was alive and serving in the Red Army.
One day, Felix’s older brother Isaak appeared at the orphanage, with the glad tidings that their parents had succeeded in fleeing eastward and survived. Isaak and their father Natan had both fought in the ranks of the Red Army, and Frida and Felix’s older sister Roza had managed to stay alive in the Soviet Union. Isaak took Felix with him, and the brothers were reunited with their parents in Moldova.
Felix studied at the Odessa Polytechnic and became a researcher and lecturer.
In 1992, Felix and his family immigrated to Israel. He often meets youth, students and educators, tells his story at Yad Vashem, and is active in survivor organizations. Felix and Ida z”l have two children, five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Rachel Katz:
Rachel Katz née Laufman was born in 1937 in Antwerp, Belgium, to an immigrant family, the second of four children. Her parents, Feyge-Tzipora and Benjamin, had emigrated from Bukovina, Romania. Feyge was a seamstress, and Benjamin earned a living as a merchant and glazier.
The Germans occupied Belgium in May 1940. In June 1942, Benjamin was arrested and sent to a forced labor camp in France. From there, he was transferred to the Mechelen transit camp in Belgium and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was murdered in November 1942.
Feyge was left to ensure the survival and welfare of her four small children, the eldest of whom was just seven years old. They moved from one hiding place to another, and Maria Luban, a neighbor in one such hiding place, obtained forged papers for them and helped them with shopping for essentials, as they were frightened to leave their apartment. When the German manhunts intensified, Luban moved Rachel and her siblings to her own home, and later, she found a hiding place for Rachel and two of her siblings in a convent near Antwerp. Luban was eventually recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
After several months, Rachel and her siblings were removed from the convent due to the impending threat of a Gestapo raid. They returned to Antwerp and lived in hiding with their mother under assumed identities with the assistance of the Belgian underground, until Belgium was liberated in September 1944.
After the war, Rachel attended the Tachkemoni school, also working to help support her family. She immigrated to Israel in 1957, got married and began raising a family.
In 2000, Rachel joined the YESH Holocaust Children Survivors in Israel association. She quickly became very active and was given responsibility over branches throughout Israel. Today, she serves as the association’s chairperson. She is also active in the Amcha association, which offers psychological and social support services to Holocaust survivors and their families. For many years, she traveled from her home in Ramat Gan to take care of Holocaust survivors at the Sha’ar Menashe Hospital, where she gave them emotional and material support, and advocated for them.
Rachel also maintained close contact with survivors outside of her work with YESH and Amcha, and thanks to the connections she made with philanthropists, she was able to collect donations on their behalf. She went to the press and approached local authorities and public figures, including Members of Knesset, in her battle to improve their welfare.
Rachel helped many survivors to clarify and access their legal rights, including allowances, discounts on services and special benefits. She advocates for Holocaust survivors from North Africa and is active in the endeavor to increase their benefits. She is dedicated to the cause of improving the circumstances of Holocaust survivors and is personally involved in their welfare on a daily basis.
Rachel and Shmuel have two children, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Arie Reiter:
Arie Reiter was born in the town of Vaslui, Romania, in 1929, the firstborn son in an Orthodox, Hasidic family of five. His parents, Lazer (Eliezer) and Tova Bella, owned a restaurant and a small inn. Arie attended the Aseh Tov Jewish school and the local Talmud Torah (Orthodox Jewish elementary school).
In 1940, the antisemitic Romanian regime shut down Arie’s school. His family was dispossessed of the inn and had to move into a wooden warehouse. Lazer was sent to a Romanian forced labor camp, where he died in 1943. Arie and his younger brothers, Binyamin and Moshe, worked in stores to support themselves and their mother, and frequently went hungry.
In January 1944, Arie was sent along with dozens of other children to a labor camp near the town of Runcu, Romania, where he was put to work paving a road in the forest and constructing a wooden bridge over the river, which exists to this day. Cold and starving, he slept on a wooden bunk in an abandoned cowshed. The children were expected to meet a daily labor quota, and those who didn’t succeed were brutally flogged. Arie’s friends sometimes took pity on him and gave him a slice of bread from their meager rations.
The Red Army reached the area in August 1944 and liberated the camp. Arie walked the 80 kilometers back to Vaslui barefoot, while Soviet planes strafed overhead. He weighed 30 kilograms on his return to the town. Reunited with his family, they lived together in the cellar of a relative’s home, as their house had been destroyed in the bombing.
Arie graduated from the Trade and Economics School. He joined the Bnei Akiva youth movement, becoming head of the Vaslui branch, collected money for the Jewish National Fund, and was active in the Youth Aliyah. In 1947, he sent his two brothers to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) on the Ma’apilim (illegal immigrants) ship Pan York, but he remained in Romania to assist with the immigration campaign, as per the request of the Zionist leadership. Arie immigrated to Israel in 1951, where he was reunited with his mother and brothers in Be’er Sheva.
Arie worked in the Finance Ministry and then for Mizrahi bank. Rising through the ranks, he eventually became the bank’s deputy director. At the same time, he gained both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Jewish history.
Arie served as a member of the religious council in Be’er Sheva, treasurer of the Negev museum, and city councilman. He assisted in the establishment of the Bnei Akiva yeshiva (Talmudical college) Ohel Shlomo in Be’er Sheva and the Naot Avraham high school in Arad. One of the founders of the Struma synagogue, he has served as its beadle for over sixty years. In an effort to increase awareness of the Ha’apala (illegal immigration) movement among today’s youth, he established the Struma Museum, visited annually by dozens of groups of IDF soldiers and youth. In 2002, Arie was given the Yakir Ha’ir (honored citizen) award, in recognition of his wide-ranging community service in Be’er Sheva.
Arie and Yehudit have five children, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Gad Fartouk:
Gad (Chmayes) Fartouk was born in 1931 in Nabeul, Tunisia, into an observant family of eleven. His father, Joseph, was a member of the community committee, a synagogue benefactor and a textile merchant. Many of his customers were not Jewish, and he maintained a harmonious relationship with them. The Jewish and Arab families in the city customarily celebrated the holidays together. The sellers at the local market knew the family well and would prepare their purchases ahead of time. “We children would just come, pick up the baskets and go home,” recalls Gad.
In November 1942, Nazi Germany occupied Tunisia: “We returned from synagogue on Friday night and sat down for dinner. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Two policemen ordered Father to come to the station,” relates Gad. Joseph refused to travel on the Sabbath, so he went on foot to the police station, where he was detained for several hours. The next day, the family moved to Hamam-Lif and lived under assumed identities.
“We didn’t go to synagogue anymore, and all our prayers took place at home,” recalls Gad. His mother, Ochaya, became ill and died. Joseph remarried, and his second wife Mary “was our mother for all intents and purposes.”
When the German presence in the city stepped up, Joseph went into hiding. The Germans would enter the houses, looking for Jews to deport to the camps. Mary sent Gad’s two older brothers to hide in the forest. A few days later, Joseph reappeared and took his wife and children to his brother, Basha. Basha lived in Gabès, and was a “protected worker” as he worked for the French navy.
The family’s money ran out, as did their jewelry, which had been proffered as bribes to Germans conducting manhunts. “We were hungry and skinny, and looked everywhere for food,” relates Gad. “Mother sent me to the market dressed as a local in the hope that I would be able to obtain food. We would go to the field next to the house and gather mallow, which became our staple diet. We scavenged for food in the bakery’s garbage bins, and I brought home soiled flour. We sifted it and made a ‘meal.’”
After the German retreat from Tunisia in May 1943, a man with a bushy beard and non-Jewish garb came to the door. At first, Gad didn’t recognize him, but it was his father. Gad took him to his older brothers, who also didn’t recognize their father.
Reunited, the family returned to Nabeul, where they celebrated Gad’s bar mitzvah. Afterwards, they moved to Tunis, where Gad joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and became an active member. He sailed to France and learned Hebrew at a hachshara (pioneer training) farm.
In March 1948, Gad immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) on an Italian fishing boat. He joined Kibbutz Beit Zera and enlisted in the Palmach. Later, he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Karmia, before eventually settling in Ashkelon. An amateur photographer, Gad later turned his hobby into a profession.
Gad and Mona z”l have four children, thirteen grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. As Gad puts it: “That is my revenge for the suffering caused by the Nazis.”
Remarks on Behalf of the Survivors
Eva Erben
Eva Erben was born in 1930 in Děčín, Czechoslovakia, to parents Marta and Jindřich Loewidt, who defined themselves as Czechs and secular Jews. They spoke both Czech and German. In 1935 the family moved to Prague, and Eva took up ballet and piano.
After the German occupation in March 1939, the Germans appropriated their home, forcing the family to move to a small apartment. Eva was forbidden from attending school and entering stores, and had to wear the Yellow Star on her clothing. The parents of the neighborhood Jewish children banded together, taking turns to host the children in their homes with a private teacher.
In 1941, the Loewidts were sent to Theresienstadt. Eva and her mother lived together in a crowded hut, before moving into an attic with her father. She worked in the vegetable garden and utilized this position to smuggle vegetables to her parents. She would visit the buildings that housed the elderly and sing to them, and she also took part in the Brundibar children’s opera.
In October 1944, her father Jindřich was deported to Auschwitz, followed soon after by Marta and Eva. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Eva met a friend who had arrived on an earlier transport and advised her to say that she was eighteen and distance herself from her mother, so that she would be assigned to forced labor and not selected for the gas chambers.
Eva and Marta were both sent to dig anti-tank trenches, and some six weeks later, they were sent on a grueling journey to one of the subcamps of Gross-Rosen.
In January 1945, Eva and her mother were forced on a death march. Marta died in her daughter’s arms and was buried in a mass grave.
One night on the march, Eva fell asleep in a corner of a barn. When the Germans woke the prisoners to resume their journey, she stayed behind, and in her frail and exhausted state, she continued to walk alone toward the Czech border. As a German soldier was preparing to shoot her, another soldier said: “Shame to waste a bullet on her. She will soon die anyway.” Eva dragged herself as far as the village of Postřekov and then lost consciousness. She awoke in a clean bed in the house of Ludmila and Kristof Jahn, who hid and took care of her lovingly until the end of the war.
“They saved me, not just by hiding me from the Germans, but with their boundless love, which was given in the knowledge that I could not repay them. I owe them my life,” says Eva. The Jahns were later recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
On the day of liberation, Eva felt a profound sense of grief: “I cried for the first time, after all those years of war. I mourned my father and my mother, and the fact that I was the only one to survive. I felt defeated, not victorious.”
After living in a Jewish orphanage in Prague, Eva studied nursing and went to work in a hospital. She met Petr, a survivor of Theresienstadt, at a party celebrating the establishment of the State of Israel. They got married and immigrated to Israel in 1949, Petr declaring: "I will build us a little house here, surrounded by a garden filled with flowers, and in our home we will raise children who will never experience the sorrow and suffering that we did."
Eva and Petr z"l have three children, nine grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren. Eva continues to tell her story, recounting her Holocaust experiences both in Israel and around the world.
Reciting "El Maleh Rahamim"
Yehuda Hauptman
The first of four children, Yehuda Hauptman was born in 1938 in Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia (today Slovakia) to parents Yitzhak and Simah. His father was a tailor and his mother a housewife. The fascist Slovak regime's collaboration with Nazi Germany led to a deterioration in the Jews' situation, and in light of this, the Hauptmans moved to Budapest, Hungary in 1941.
The Germans entered Hungary in 1944 and Yehuda and his family were forced to wear a Yellow Star on their clothing. A ghetto was established in the city in November. Yehuda's mother obtained Swedish citizen documents for the family and they were given refuge in a "protected house", but Yitzhak was sent to a labor camp. Escaping from the camp, he crossed frozen rivers and bridges manned by guards, hid in forests and eventually made it home. Simah tended devotedly to his frostbitten feet, but two weeks after his arrival German soldiers once again seized him and sent him back to forced labor.
Yehuda's grandparents were also confined in the ghetto, and helped Simah to take care of the children. "Grandpa taught me how to pray, and to read the chumash (Bible)," recalls Yehuda. "Each day in the ghetto, we received a bowl of soup and a slice of bread. People were starving. I took a school bag and walked out of the ghetto to an area with villas. Hunting through the garbage bins, I scavenged for remnants of food and brought them to my family."
Yehuda's father returned from the labor camp in early 1945, and in the same period the Soviets liberated Budapest.
After liberation, Simah was diagnosed with tuberculosis and hospitalized. When the children were expected to study and write on the Sabbath, Yitzhak decided it was time to leave Hungary, and in 1949 an opportunity arose to move to Austria. Due to his wife's illness he remained with her, but sent Yehuda and his sister Rachel to Austria, hoping to join them later on. The children posed as another family's offspring and smugglers were paid to bring them to the border.
Yehuda and Rachel reached a hospital in Vienna that had been converted into a refugee camp. There, they joined a group of youths gathered together by Naftali Lau with the purpose of immigration to Israel. Yehuda and Rachel traveled to Italy, and sailed to Israel in 1950. They were taken in by their uncle in Safed and were sent to school in Petach Tikva. After Simah passed away in Budapest, Yitzhak and his two daughters immigrated to Israel.
Yehuda reached Kibbutz Sha'albim with the Youth Aliyah, studied and worked in agriculture. He enlisted in the IDF and fought in Israel's wars, from the Sinai Campaign until the First Lebanon War. "It was a great privilege, a dream that I never believed would come true – to wear the IDF uniform and fight for the State of Israel."
Yehuda and his wife Yehudit settled in Moshav Tkuma, where Yehuda fulfilled his pioneering aspirations and worked the land. He held a number of public positions in the surrounding settlements, contributing to their development and welfare.
On 7 October 2023, Yehuda and Yehudit were in Tkuma, close to the Gaza border. They were evacuated from their home for four months, during which time Yehuda yearned to go back. The distance only served to reinforce his profound connection to the land, and he held on to the hope of returning and rebuilding.
Yehuda and Yehudit have six children, 23 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.