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A Marblehead High School senior with five Holocaust survivors in her family stood before town officials and residents Friday to deliver a deeply personal message at the town’s fourth annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony.
Sasha Ganezer, 17, told the gathering at Abbot Hall about her great-grandparents Isidor Juda and Irene Wolf, sharing how their survival during World War II shaped her Jewish identity and inspired her to speak publicly about the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
“I don’t think I would have the confidence to be up here today if it wasn’t for him,” Ganezer said of her great-grandfather, who she called Zadie. “Not only that, but I wouldn’t have such a strong connection to my religion without his dedication to the practice of Judaism.”
The ceremony, which began at noon, featured remarks from Rabbi Michael Schwartz, Select Board Chair Dan Fox, Police Chief Dennis King and event organizer Helaine Hazlett. The program also included a public lighting of 13 candles and a reading of the town’s proclamation.
Five Holocaust survivors
Ganezer told attendees she spent weeks studying her great-grandparents’ testimonies before the ceremony. Juda was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1921 and attended business school before the Nazi invasion forced Jews out of schools and restricted their daily activities in the mid-1930s. After antisemitism killed three of his uncles and their families, Juda fled to Switzerland alone, hoping to eventually reunite with his family in America.
In Switzerland, SS men put him on a train they claimed was headed to Vienna. When Juda realized it was actually bound for a concentration camp, he jumped off when the train slowed unexpectedly. He eventually reached the Swiss border, was hospitalized and then sent to an immigration camp. Between 1938 and 1940, he obtained his German passport and visa, arriving in the United States in 1943. He joined the Army and served in the Pacific, where he was severely wounded in the Philippines, leading to his discharge in 1945. He received a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Combat Infantry Badge and Presidential Citation.
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Juda died in 2023, just before his 102nd birthday. Ganezer recalled watching him give testimony at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at Epstein Hillel School in 2019.
“I just remember being so proud to be his great-granddaughter,” she said. “I thought his story was so fascinating, and that he was so brave for doing the things he did.”
Her great-grandmother Wolf was born in Coburn on the Mosel River in Germany in 1921. Only she and her older brother in a family of six survived the Holocaust. Wolf witnessed her synagogue burn on Kristallnacht, saw her father arrested and experienced her own home attacked. She worked at a Jewish hospital in Cologne before being taken to the Terezinstadt ghetto and later transported to Auschwitz, where she and other women were forced to shave their heads and strip.
Wolf learned that some who arrived at Auschwitz with her were sent to the gas chambers. After the war, she reunited with her boyfriend Charlie, whom she later married, and they settled in New York. Wolf passed away when Ganezer was 11.
In 2020, the family received an unexpected connection to their past when a German family contacted them about a set of china that had belonged to Wolf’s family before the Nazi expulsion. The German neighbors had held onto the dishes for generations, hoping to someday return them to their rightful owners.
Schwartz opened the ceremony by explaining the significance of the date. Eighty-one years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz. In 2005, the United Nations designated the date as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“This is the fourth year that we here in Marblehead are holding this ceremony to remember, to learn and to prepare our town and community to resist the possible return of fascism or any other form of hatred and tyranny,” Schwartz said.
He noted that 13 million people were murdered by the Nazis, including 6 million Jews, nearly half of all those exterminated. One and a half million were children. Schwartz quoted Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, saying that what happens to the Jews first serves as a warning to everyone.
‘Not a relic of the past’
Fox addressed the rise of antisemitism locally and nationally.
“Antisemitism, unfortunately, is not a relic of the past,” Fox said. “We’re seeing it on a rise in Marblehead, throughout this country and throughout this world. We see it in rhetoric, in social media, and unfortunately through the leaders of our country.”
Fox called on residents to educate younger generations, speak out against hatred and stand together across communities. He emphasized that antisemitism threatens not just the Jewish community but all communities.
“Hatred that targets one community ultimately weakens the safety and dignity of every community,” he said.
King pledged the police department’s commitment to protecting Marblehead’s Jewish population.
“I commit to that as your chief,” King said. “I commit this department to have a culture that is always, always, always responding in a way that puts your safety first.”
Ganezer concluded her remarks by connecting her family’s survival to her responsibility today.
“It is certainly scary right now, but the fact that they all lived to tell their stories says something about the Jewish people,” she said. “There may be people out there who don’t support Jews; there are even people who wouldn’t be opposed to another Holocaust, but there are also people like Ulrike and her family who stand up for us in times of distress.”
She was referring to Ulrike Moritz, the German woman whose family preserved her great-grandmother’s china and returned it to the family in a ceremony that forged new connections across continents.
“We will never forget,” Ganezer said. “Never again.“
