Remembering an Extraordinary Woman: Vera Toper

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. To a non-Jew like me this day usually passes without much thought or context. My experience of the Holocaust is filtered through literary works like "The Diary of Anne Frank" or movies like "Schindler's List." When I was last in D.C. I visited the Holocaust Museum, which though horrifying and somber still is rooted in someone else's history.

On Sunday I attended a memorial service at Temple Sholom for Vera Toper, the mother of our friend George Toper. I had never met Vera Toper. She came alive for me through the words of Rabbi Andrew R. Sklarz, and moving eulogies by George and Pamela Toper. This is nothing new. Whenever I attend a funeral I come away with a new appreciation and understanding of the deceased and his or her family. 

The difference here was that Vera Toper survived the Holocaust. Even more remarkable was that she overcame the horrors and indignities, which killed her mother, father and brother, with her belief in humanity and innate optimism intact. Vera Toper's quiet strength was celebrated by those who knew her well and by those of us who never had the privilege to meet her, except through a video interview with Rabbi Sklarz a few years before her death shown at the service. I understand that there is a movement to record the memories of Holocaust survivors like Vera Toper as they are now in their eighties and nineties. The video did not dwell on the horrors of the Holocaust, but also touched on the joy experienced by the Shapiro family living in Vilnius, Poland before the onset of war in 1939. 

We who are living have a responsibility to remember the Holocaust and to mourn for the millions of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and Germans killed by the nazis and to cherish those few survivors still alive to bear witness.