32 | MAY 16 • 2024 
J
N

T

his month’s episode of 
FedRadioDetroit, brought to 
you by the Jewish Federation 
of Detroit and the Detroit Jewish 
News, is filled with guests who have 
gone through difficult circumstances 
yet continue to lead meaningful and 
fulfilling lives.
This impactful episode, co-hosted 
by Sam Dubin and Beverly Liss, also 
has a guest interviewer, 15-year-old 
Lily Liss, granddaughter of Beverly, 
who interviews her Holocaust survi-
vor great-grandmother Sherry Kohen.
Lily asks her great-grandmother 
what it was like for her growing up in 
Czechoslovakia in the 1930s when the 
Hungarians took power and antisemi-
tism was on the rise. 
Kohen spoke of walking in on 
her father, who was crying. “I said, 
‘Whyever are you crying?’ He said, 
‘Very bad times are coming for the 
Jewish people.
’ He knew.
“It was hard living,
” Kohen contin-
ued. 
Lily asked how she kept going 
through the hard times. ‘Well, I have a 
lot of willpower,
” Kohen said, adding 
about the rising tide of antisemitism 
today: “You have to be strong and not 
to give up, you know? And just think 
positively. Jewish people always do, 
and let’s hope we’ll make it OK.
“My heart is aching for Israel,
” said 
Kohen, who lived in the country 
after WWII. “It was a new country, 
a young country. It wasn’t an easy 
life. Everything was rations. We had 
to work hard. We were thankful for 
Israel. We worked hard, but it was a 
beautiful country.
”
The next guest on the podcast is 

Federation’s Shaliach, Lior Zisser-
Yogev, who, in her role, works to 
“bring Israel to Detroit and build 
bridges to connect the two commu-
nities.
” In this episode, she shares the 
heart-breaking details of how her 
brother Eli, only 27, died on Oct. 
7, 2023, during the Hamas terrorist 
attacks on Israel.
She relates how she learned the 
devastating news two days later 
in her office while preparing for a 
Community Solidarity event. “My 
husband came into the office, so 
immediately, I knew. I asked him, 
‘Did anything happen to my brother?’ 
He couldn’t even speak. He just nod-
ded his head. And I started yelling, 
‘What happened to my brother?’ And 
he said he was killed. 
“It was the worst day of my life, 
for sure,
” she said. She tried to book 
a flight back to Israel but there were 
none available. “So, I told my super-
visor, ‘I need to be at the Solidarity 
Event. I want to speak. And I felt 
that was my mission now, to tell that 
story.
” 
Zisser-Yogev also goes on to dis-
cuss the anti-Israel rhetoric in the 
current mainstream media. She 
shared, “I will not try to engage in a 
narrative battle with someone who 
doesn’t think Israel has a right to exist 
or doesn’t have the right to defend 
itself against terror. Because if some-
one thinks that Israel is at fault for 
Oct. 7, or should be blamed for Oct. 
7, or should just sit there and not 
defend itself as Hamas and Hezbollah 
fire rockets in Israel, then I have 
nothing to say to that person.
“But I feel like a lot of people, when 

FedRadio Detroit features guests 
who’ve lived through awful times 
yet find meaning to go on.

An Impactful 
Episode

JACKIE HEADAPOHL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

OUR COMMUNITY

Sherry Kohen 
and Lily Liss

Lior Zisser-
Yogev

