Holocaust Survivor Has Belated Bar Mitzvah to Remember Lost Family

The Fellowship  |  April 2, 2018

The Jerusalem Post reports on one Holocaust survivor who missed out on celebrating his bar mitzvah, usually celebrated at age 13 for boys and a rite of passage, because the Holocaust robbed him of being able to practice his faith freely in his youth. While his whole family perished in the Holocaust, he finally was able to remember their lives by fulfilling one of his lifelong dreams.

“I saw something was missing in my life, a tree, a branch, real parents,” Shachar, who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic, told the Israel Broadcasting Corp. during the event for a report that was aired Thursday. “Every Jew has a bar mitzvah at their right age, and I never had one.”

His wife, Hannah, said she was “very excited because it’s his dream to have a bar mitzvah.”