6 | MAY 12 • 2022 

1942 - 2022

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week

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DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 
FOUNDATION
go to the website
www.djnfoundation.org

The Detroit Jewish News (USPS 275-520) 

is published every Thursday at 

32255 Northwestern Highway, #205, 

Farmington Hills, Michigan. Periodical 

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additional mailing offices. 

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Detroit Jewish News, 

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MISSION STATEMENT The Detroit Jewish News will be of service to the Jewish community. The Detroit Jewish 
News will inform and educate the Jewish and general community to preserve, protect and sustain the Jewish 
people of greater Detroit and beyond, and the State of Israel.

VISION STATEMENT The Detroit Jewish News will operate to appeal to the broadest segments of the greater 
Detroit Jewish community, reflecting the diverse views and interests of the Jewish community while advancing the 
morale and spirit of the community and advocating Jewish unity, identity and continuity.

DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
32255 Northwestern Hwy. Suite 205,
Farmington Hills, MI 48334
248-354-6060
thejewishnews.com

 
 
Publisher
The Detroit Jewish 
News Foundation

| Board of Directors:
 Chair: Gary Torgow
 Vice President: David Kramer 
 Secretary: Robin Axelrod
 Treasurer: Max Berlin
 Board members: Larry Jackier, 
 Jeffrey Schlussel, Mark Zausmer
 
 
 Senior Advisor to the Board: 
 Mark Davidoff
 Alene and Graham Landau Archivist Chair: 
 Mike Smith
 Founding President & Publisher Emeritus: 
 Arthur Horwitz
 Founding Publisher 
 Philip Slomovitz, of blessed memory

 
 
 

| Editorial 
 DIrector of Editorial: 
 Jackie Headapohl
jheadapohl@thejewishnews.com

 Associate Editor:
 Rachel Sweet
 rsweet@thejewishnews.com
Associate Editor: 
David Sachs
dsachs@thejewishnews.com
Social Media and Digital Producer:
Nathan Vicar
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Staff Reporter: Danny Schwartz 
dschwartz@thejewishnews.com
Editorial Assistant: Sy Manello
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Contributing Writers:
Nate Bloom, Rochel Burstyn, Suzanne 
Chessler, Annabel Cohen, Keri Guten 
Cohen, Shari S. Cohen, Shelli Liebman 
Dorfman, Louis Finkelman, Stacy 
Gittleman, Esther Allweiss Ingber, 
Barbara Lewis, Jennifer Lovy, Rabbi 
Jason Miller, Alan Muskovitz, Robin 

Schwartz, Mike Smith, Steve Stein, 
Julie Smith Yolles, Ashley Zlatopolsky

| Advertising Sales 
Director of Advertising: Keith Farber
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Senior Account Executive: 
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| Business Office
 Director of Operations: Amy Gill
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 Operations Manager: Andrea Gusho 
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 Operations Assistant: Ashlee Szabo 
 Circulation: Danielle Smith
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| Production By 
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 Manager: Scott Drzewiecki 
 Designers: Kelly Kosek, Kaitlyn Schoen, 
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PURELY COMMENTARY

student’s corner
A Poem for 
a Survivor
I

n honor of Yom HaShoah, I wrote a 
poem about a particular Holocaust 
survivor’s experience escaping a cattle 
car on the way to the death camps. 
 This year’s Yad Vashem 
Holocaust memorial 
theme is Deportation to 
Extinction, and this poem 
aims to honor the theme 
and the overall message 
and meaning that can be 
taken away from it for 
all of us as both Jews and 
human beings. 

PROMISE TO PAPA
 Out of nowhere came the cattle cars 
and our place in them as vermin, 
All of our futures so unsure, yet death 
so blatantly determined.
Once the sicknesses of man had come 
and slaughtered us a few,
A new madness of kine had come to see 

the butchering through.
Pained by the constant wringing of the 
rags that were their souls,
Every minute on the railway, a plunge 
deeper into holes,
But then something unexpected: a hand 
stretched towards the window frame,
Its fingers clawing at barbed wire, 
painting it bloodily in shame, 
A sight that had to be remembered, but 
who possibly could live to tell the story?
Perhaps myself, the little boy who could 
now fly out the window as a lorry;
A creature of color and renewal,
A hope for life that is not cruel.
Lifting a pile of skin and bones, my 
father hoisted me, 
So that I could jump out of the train 
and grow up with this memory.
I turned to my Papa with frantic eyes 
for one last look, one last embrace, 

But instead he left me with these words 
shut beside my soul forever in its case:
היהת ןב םדא was the last thing I ever 
heard my father say, 
A precept of three simple words I’ve 
carried with me since then every day.
My mother’s body who I left right then, 
met its end in plumes of smoke,
But inside my old, cracking bones sits 
the gentle, loving way she spoke,
And my אתבס and my אבס, how I wish 
they hadn’t met such a fate,
But for our encounters in my dreams, 
at the very least, it’s not too late
And for my beloved father, I now write 
and think only of you, 
I hope you know, in all these years I’ve 
kept the vow on which I flew. 

Rozie Aronov is sophomore at Frankel Jewish 

Academy and a graduate of Hillel Day School.

Rozie Aronov 

