By Rishe Deitsch
With Deborah Schechter, Educational Director of Project Witness
There’s a new name on the Jewish horizon— Project Witness. What is Project Witness? Who is behind it? What is its ultimate goal?
In this special section on Holocaust education, you will read about Mrs. Ruth Lichtenstein, of Brooklyn, NY, the daughter of Harav Leibel Levin and Rebbetzin Devorah Levin. Mrs. Lichtenstein is the dynamic and unstoppable publisher of Hamodia (“the newspaper for Torah Jewry”) and Binah (a weekly magazine for Jewish women), and she is also the founder and director of Project Witness. Despite her accomplishments as a prominent and innovative publisher, Mrs. Lichtenstein views her work with Project Witness as the most important job she does, because, as she says, “I can face my parents now.”
Project Witness, Mrs. Lichtenstein’s brainchild, is a nonprofit Holocaust resource center dedicated to transmitting the history, the spiritual courage, and the kiddush Hashem of the six million Jews caught in the Nazi trap during the Holocaust years. It merges lucid scholarship with cuttingedge media to provide Holocaust educational resources for schools, community centers, and lay readers.
Mrs. Lichtenstein asks, “How can Jews tolerate even the slightest hint that their children, grandchildren, or greatgrandchildren might question the truth of what occurred and that they might, chas v’sholom, simply dismiss it as something that is not really applicable to them?” Yet, sadly, in many circles, this is already happening. Because of this, all Jews have a distinct mission — never to allow the world in general and Jews in particular to forget or minimize what the Holocaust has meant to us as a nation. All of us owe the six million who perished al kiddush Hashem a debt that can only be repaid by making sure that they did not do so in vain. Project Witness wants to help repay that debt.
Through a variety of innovative programs, Project Witness has started down the long road toward ensuring that the significance of the Holocaust becomes ingrained in the minds, hearts, and souls of future Jewish generations.
With this goal in mind, Mrs. Lichtenstein has authored a fascinating and comprehensive history of the Holocaust titled Witness to History. This landmark textbook includes countless under-reported instances of spiritual courage and kiddush Hashem. It has been adopted as a textbook in a growing number of yeshivos, Jewish day schools and Hebrew schools of all stripes and types.
It is accompanied by a DVD and detailed Teacher’s Guide, and has been granted coveted NYSTL approval that entitles schools to purchase it using state funds. It is so highly regarded that is was reprinted for the third time in the summer of 2011.
Project Witness has also developed a new and innovative Remember the Children program designed to forge a positive emotional connection between today’s youth and the youngsters who perished in the Holocaust.
Through a sensitive, age-appropriate video entitled Connecting the Links, and by means of a meaningful passport program, today’s children are asked to honor and remember hose children of yesteryear who perished al kiddush Hashem. The response to this program has been electrifying.
Hundreds of youngsters have participated in it. After viewing the video, youngsters are each given their own passport containing an individual name of one of the one-and-a-half million children who perished. They are asked to remember this name for as long as they live and to honor this child’s memory by doing good deeds and learning Torah on his or her behalf throughout their lives.
Here are some of the comments made by the youngsters after they participated in the program:
Which part of the program was most meaningful to you?
The story of the boy who rescued the Torahs from the shul and risked his life. A boy a few years younger [than me] is like a superhero.
Name at least one fact about the Holocaust that you didn’t know before.
I didn’t know about the ghettos. I didn’t know how many people were forced to live in [a space] probably the size of my bed. And families living ten people in a room.
How would you describe the program to a friend who hasn’t yet seen it?
I would describe it as unbelievable and inspirational.
I would tell the person how amazing the whole thing was and how united I felt with the other kids in the auditorium with me, having the same experience.
What can we do to honor the children?
Think of them when we learn Torah and do all the mitzvos, because the Nazis wanted to get rid of us, so if we do all the mitzvos, we are doing the opposite of what the Nazis wanted.Do more good things because of them.
What feelings did you have after the entire program was over?
I take things for granted and don’t thank Hashem for everything, even little things like shoes, and water. I had goosebumps. I told my mother that l would try to find out more about her [the name I had received].
Project Witness has conducted numerous workshops, community events, and teacher-training seminars in Brooklyn, Monsey, Lakewood, West Hempstead, Chicago and Miami. These programs have been met with great
enthusiasm. As one woman wrote, “The stories you told demand a commitment, they [help me to] set priorities in life…”
The online branch of Project Witness, projectwitness.org, is an interactive website that offers the very latest in Holocaust educational programming, resources, and events, for teachers, students, schools, and shuls worldwide.
Mrs. Ruth Lichtenstein is a woman with a mission. She comes from a distinguished family—her father was Harav Yehudah Aryeh Leib (“Leibel”) Levin, grandson of the Imrei Emes, the third Gerrer Rebbe. Harav Leibel Levin, in his daughter’s words, was “a man who had survived the biggest nightmare on earth, losing those nearest and dearest to him – his family, his friends, his relatives, the country in which he had been born and raised – and yet never despaired.
Despite all he had suffered, he knew how to extract the positive from the negative…” He has merited to have his vision of a newspaper for Torah-true Jewry come true, not only in Eretz Yisroel and not only in lashon kodesh, but also in English, in Hamodia, throughout the Jewish world.
Mrs. Lichtenstein’s mother, Esther Devorah Mostowitz, was 13 years old and living with her family in Otwock, Poland, when her father was caught with a sefer Torah and sent to Treblinka. Her mother was left alone with four young children, of whom Devorah was the oldest still at home – and they went into hiding. Menachem, two years Devorah’s senior, was in a forced labor camp.
One day a Polish policeman and a Jewish woman with an Aryan appearance came to the family’s hiding place. They claimed they had been hired by family
members in Radom for an exorbitant sum to bring the family to safety. Mrs. Mostowitz did not trust them. She sent her 13-year-old daughter Devorah to the post office to send a telegram to her family to verify that this was not a trap.
At first Devorah was afraid to leave the safety of the hiding place, but her younger sister Nechamah persuaded her to go, promising to pray on her behalf.
Devorah took a circuitous route to the post office, which normally could be reached in half an hour. When she arrived there the Polish officer and the woman were waiting for her.
They told her the bitter truth…
Immediately after she had left home, her five-year-old brother had begun crying loudly, and the Germans had heard him and raided the family’s hiding place. Her grandmother, her mother, her two sisters and her younger brother were all shot to death on the spot.
Devorah became hysterical and was inconsolable. In order to calm her down somewhat the two strangers took her to her brother in the forced labor camp where he convinced her to join the two strangers as she could not stay with him. She went with them to Radom.
Three weeks after arriving in Radom, Devorah survived an aktzia (round-up of Jews for transport to death camps) where 21,000 Jews were murdered. In the summer of 1944, when there were not too many Jews left in Poland, she crossed Warsaw through the sewer pipes. With miracles, she came out and hid with her brother Menachem for eight months in a bunker. The day of liberation, May 8, 1945, they were liberated by the Russians who immediately arrested her brother. They accused him of assisting the Germans. For the next 2 1/2 years she thought she was a sole survivor until she was reunited with her brother.
In May 1945, all alone, she decided to make aliyah. She went on a nightmarish journey to Romania, where she waited for a certificate, but still refused to go on a journey that was scheduled to start on Shabbos. Rebbetzin Chaya Miriam Shulman, who met her and was amazed by her inner strength, adopted her.
When she arrived in Israel, she insisted on getting married only to someone who reflected her father’s way of life. Eventually Rebbetzin Shulman arranged her marriage to the Gerrer Rebbe’s grandson.
Mrs. Ruth Lichtenstein can never forget what her mother endured and she can never stop making sure that the memory of what happened in the past is preserved for the future.
#2, please email [email protected]
thank you
My aunt, Ruchy (Ruth) Follman, who is now sitting shiva, having lost her daughter last week Friday, will be starting to speak for this organization. It’s such an amazing idea, and I am thankful for it’s founder for having the courage and determination to bring such subject, which could be difficult at times to talk about, to light and make the world aware of what happened and making sure no one ever forgets! Kol Hokvod, and Hatzlacha Rabba.
the story gave me the chills. keep it up, though, It is very important for people to know…