To keep Ora’s memory alive, every year on Yom HaShoah I will light a memorial candle to make sure she will never be forgotten.
My name is Ora Marantz and I celebrated my Bat Mitzvah on the 30th July 2021.
At first, because of Coronavirus I was unsure if I was going to be able to celebrate the Bat Mitzvah I planned with all my friends and family in person. However, as the date came closer and COVID restrictions started to lift, I was very grateful and lucky to have the Bat Mitzvah I hoped for and loved.
As part of my Bat Mitzvah I decided to twin with a victim of the holocaust who tragically was unable to celebrate her bat mitzvah. I thought that this would be a meaningful experience to learn about someone who sadly died at such a young age and never made it to their bat mitzvah.
The girl I twinned with was called Ora Chuchanowska. She was born in Kolish, Poland in 1938. She was sent to the Majdenik camp in Poland and was imprisoned there until she died in 1943. She was only 5 years old. Her parents were called Simkha and Bunim.
The past 18 months have been very different for all of us. We have stayed at home and not been allowed to do the things we usually do. The government told us what we could and could not do. Ora was also not allowed the freedom to do the things she wanted to do and was finally sent to the concentration camp. The two experiences had a massive difference between them. I was trapped for a good reason, to keep me safe, however Ora was kept for no good reason at all, because she was Jewish. So instead of being trapped to be safe , like me, she was persecuted.
To keep Ora’s memory alive, every year on Yom Hashoah I will light a memorial candle to make sure she will never be forgotten.