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Source: https://www.yadvashem.org/remembrance/archive/torchlighters.html?id=4368
Torchlighters on Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2025
(Yad Vashem) Six Holocaust survivors lit torches at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, April 23, at the Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Here are their stories: Monika Barzel was born in 1937 in Berlin. Her mother, Edith, a surgical nurse, had to work long hours at the Jewish hospital in Berlin to support the family. In 1942 her grandmother, Gertrud, was deported to Theresienstadt, where she was murdered. Monika went to live with her mother at the hospital, along with the children of four other doctors. In 1943, the Gestapo ordered the director of the Jewish hospital to downsize. He was forced to choose 300 people, who were then deported to Auschwitz. Monika boarded the train, but was later told to get off. When the Red Army liberated the hospital, hundreds of Jews were still alive there. Arie Durst was born in 1933 in Lwow, Poland (today Ukraine). In 1941 Nazi Germany occupied Lwow. During the Nazi roundups of Jews, 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. After Arie's brother Marian was taken and murdered, Arie's mother Salomea obtained forged papers for herself and Arie and moved to Warsaw and assumed the identity of Polish Catholics. In 1944 they were caught by the Germans and deported to the Pruszkow labor camp but escaped from the moving train. Gad Fartouk was born in 1931 in Nabeul, Tunisia. In 1942, Nazi Germany occupied Tunisia. After the family's money ran out in bribes to Germans conducting manhunts, "We were hungry and skinny, and looked everywhere for 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." Rachel Katz was born in 1937 in Antwerp, Belgium. The Germans occupied Belgium in 1940. Her father, Benjamin, was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was murdered in 1942. Her mother and three siblings moved from one hiding place to another. Maria Lubben, a neighbor, moved the family into her own home, and later, she found a hiding place for Rachel and two of her siblings in a convent near Antwerp. Arie Reiter was born in Vaslui, Romania, in 1929. In 1940, the antisemitic Romanian regime shut down Arie's elementary school. His father, Lazer, was sent to a Romanian forced labor camp, where he died in 1943. In 1944, Arie was sent along with dozens of other children to a labor camp. After the Red Army liberated the camp, Arie walked 80 km. back to Vaslui barefoot. Felix Sorin was born in 1932 in Mogilev, Byelorussia. When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Sorins fled eastward. In the ensuing chaos, Felix was separated from his family and was left alone in German-occupied territory. 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. Felix did not reveal his identity until the Red Army liberated the region in 1944.