I will never forget Carol and the other six million victims of the Holocaust.
Barney Leboff, from Shenley wanted to do something more than leyn from the Torah for his Bar mitzvah, so he twinned his Bar Mitzvah with Carol Smulovici, a young Romanian boy who was murdered during the Holocaust.
As part of Yad Vashem UK’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah twinning project he was given basic details about Carol, and how he was murdered in 1941 by Romanian government troops, as well as information on Carol’s sister Miriam, who had survived and emigrated to Israel. On a trip to Israel with his parents, Amanda and Jeremy and younger brother Alfie, visited the Yad Vashem archives and Barney spent time researching Carol and his family. He discovered that Miriam had recently passed away but from one of the millions of Pages of Testimony stored by Yad Vashem, they were able to contact Miriam’s daughter Haya and include her and her family in the Bar Mitzvah celebrations.
For Barney, meeting the family of his Bar Mitzvah “twin” was a very moving experience, and made his own Bar Mitzvah feel more meaningful as he learned about his “twin”.