By COLlive reporter
A special exhibit about German Jewish artists who perished in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust included the name Benny Zacharias.
Rabbi Mendel Barkahn, Rabbi of the Shamir community and Chairman of the Jewish Museum in Riga, Latvia, was intrigued by the name.
His neighbor in the Israeli city of Lod goes by the name Benny Zacharia – only he is a Lubavitcher chossid that is of Yemenite descent.
Barkahn told his neighbor about his discovery. Zacharia told him that he knew of no family relatives who lived in Europe during the Second World War.
Despite that, Zacharia was inspired to commemorate the Holocaust victim’s memory and dedicated to mark his annual yartzeit. He held a ‘seudas mitzvah’ meal at the Chabad shul and saying Mishnayos in memory of a fellow Jew that he never met.
