Apr 27
Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance) Observance
Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance) Observance will be led by Rav Michaela Brown. The guest speaker will be Ben Weisner.
Ben Weisner was born in a small town in Romania, where he and his family lived just a block away from the home of Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. With his parents, both Holocaust survivors, Ben emigrated to the United States in 1964 and joined a community of refugees from Central and Eastern Europe in Cleveland, Ohio.
Raised in a traditional Jewish home, Ben's first language was Yiddish. He often heard his parents speak of the “Old Country.” After 55 years of imagining his birthplace, he traveled back to Romania, Hungary, and Germany to rediscover a part of his family's history and their experiences before, during, and after WWII.
Ben will share the experiences of his mother, a teenage girl of 16, who was swept up in the swift destruction of Hungary’s Jewish population in 1944, and survived the Auschwitz death camp and months of slave labor in Germany.
In his professional life, Ben has worked in the K-12 educational technology field for over twenty years. He also enjoys volunteering and taking long-distance bicycle journeys in North America, Europe, and Japan. He has been married to Margaret Rog, a Saint Louis Park city council member, for over 30 years. They are the proud parents of three adult children.
Dinner will be provided after the service.
from Chaplain's Office