How We Started

The beginning of our journey of the Holocaust and Revival Haggadah initiative, as described by Maya Goldenberg, leader of the initiative:

In February 2010, a few months after my parents’ death in Haifa Israel, both brave survivors of the Holocaust, I noticed a small newspaper ad in Novi Crakovskia, a monthly magazine of the town of Krakow immigrants in Israel. Ogania (Gena) Rotter z”l, Holocaust survivor and a hero from Tel Aviv, wrote that she felt that her biological time and the rest of the survivors is running out. Scared and anxious she wrote that the message of heroism and victory for future generations, a message that carries the value of human life, does not exist and is not expressed in ceremonies and scriptures.

My connection to Ms. Rotter’s words was instantaneous. As a daughter of a Partisan from Pinsk (White Russia), and the survivor of Krakow-Poland camps, I understood exactly what she meant. I heard this chorus in my parents home, in these and other versions.

The words of Ms. Rotter z”l and especially the timing in which they were said, inspired my conscious strongly! The initiative of the Holocaust and Revival Haggadah began to roll on the timeline and the essence between Tel Aviv-Israel and Toronto-Canada.

Since then, everything has taken place quickly: a meeting with Ms. Rotter in Tel Aviv, a marathon of personal meetings for the establishment of a steering team, planning and concerns, and we found ourselves in an emotional vortex. The target has begun to make progress in the meetings: the promotion of a new tradition in Israeli society and in the diaspora, a yearly family and national tradition of reading the Holocaust Haggadah of Revival.

The initiative grew rapidly to an eclectic team of volunteers, dedicated and motivated. We became a passionate think tank! We conducted discussions, interviews, meetings, and focus groups. Some have explored the world’s leading Holocaust museums. At the end of two and a half years of a thorough process of study and discussion, a strategic document was signed and its essence – the vision and its implementation.”

We invite you to join a journey in Israel and the Diaspora ,to create a new tradition for future generations to recognize Holocaust survivors and their descendants. A journey to preserve the authentic memory of the survivors, a journey to create a world that respects values such as dignity, compassion and basic human rights.

We call upon you to be an ambassador of the vision in social networks or any other forum. It is only in our hands, those who live in the image of the survivors and their being, we have the power to sow the seeds of the new tradition, as a moral lesson and values derived from the events of the Holocaust.

We work in full vigor for the creation of the Holocaust and Revival Haggadah, with the help of many others. We will act to implement it in Israeli society and in the diaspora, in the various educational frameworks, in the youth movements, the IDF, in cities and in the periphery, among veteran and immigrants, among secular and traditional, among adults and youngsters. Our goal is that at the end of the process of creating tradition, it will be adopted in a stately manner, by determining A day of the year in which the Haggadah will be read in homes, among families and in state ceremonies.

We have a moral obligation to carry the message of the survivors and to express their authentic feelings. Their fear of forgetfulness in future generations including the important message of human value and the universality of existence. We are the generation that must do it before it is too late! The mission is right there in front of us!