At our Shabbat evening service, Barbara Gilford will tell the story of her father and his family, from their vibrant lives in Czechoslovakia to their tragic deaths in the gas chambers. Barbara’s grandmother, Clara Buchsbaum, her daughter Gretl Spitzer and Gretl’s daughter Susi Spitzer- three generations of Buchsbaum women- all lost their lives in the Holocaust. Susi was only 11 years old when she and her mother died in Treblinka. Clara died in Auschwitz.

Barbara tells the story of her family in the spirit of the late Elie Wiesel who wrote, “Memory is a passion no less powerful or pervasive than love. It is the ability to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading, and to call upon the future to illuminate it.”