By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

A group from the Lehigh Valley Jewish community traveled to Harrisburg on Yom HaShoah for the annual Civic Commemoration of the Holocaust at the state capitol. Leah Leisawitz, a seventh-grader who spent three years at the Jewish Day School of the Lehigh Valley during Covid and a granddaughter of Allentown residents Jay and Evelyn Lipschutz, presented the Holocaust story of her great-grandparents to Governor Josh Shapiro, state lawmakers, and the others gathered.

Jay and Evelyn were both there, as were Leah’s parents, Michele and Ben Leisawitz, and her great-grandmother Esther Bratt. “My wife and I,” said Jay, “are so proud of Michele and particularly Leah, who is proud of Judaism and doing her bat mitzvah project speaking out about the Holocaust, since her great-grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. This proved to be a wonderful day for the entire family.”

Leah researched and put together the presentation as her bat mitzvah project and was invited to bring it to the annual commemoration in Harrisburg. Crediting JDS for instilling confidence in her, she has made the Holocaust presentation at multiple schools and other locations. Her visits include a companion who boosts her confidence too. “My great-grandmother is always there, answering questions that everyone has, and everyone gets to meet her afterwards,” Leah said. “I feel like that has a special impact on them.”

Esther was a young girl in Poland when World War II began. She and her parents endured the horrors of the Vilna ghetto and later the HaKapeh labor camp. They beat staggering odds to survive—there’s less than a 1% chance of a whole family making it out alive. During the Kinderaktion, the Nazi campaign to murder Jewish children, her father, helped by a Christian named Nicolai, hid her in a cellar until liberation in 1944.

Leah also told the audience at the capitol about her great-grandfather Sid Bratt, Evelyn’s husband, who died in September 2024. He was 10 years old in Nazi Germany when he witnessed Kristallnacht, the 1938 government-sanctioned pogrom targeting Jewish communities. He was taken to London without any siblings in the Kindertransport rescue operation and spent the war in Jewish orphanages. He was reunited with his father in 1945 but never saw his mother or siblings again.

The capitol commemoration, so important to the Jewish community and the State of Pennsylvania, made Michele feel honored and proud. “It was such a meaningful ceremony,” she said, “especially with everything happening in the world right now.”

Leah could relate. “I just want to tell the story so I can influence the next generation about the Holocaust,” she said, “and try to make sure it never happens again to anyone.”