This Tuesday, Jews around the world mark Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Honoring the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, it commemorates not only the immense loss of Jewish life, but also Jewish resistance—how a community, facing unimaginable circumstances, fought back, survived, and went on to rebuild full lives and families.
Against all odds, their descendants now number in the millions and live across the globe—including among our colleagues. Today, we’re honored to share the remarkable story of one of them: Free Press data and analytics lead Gabrielle Markel. Here, she reflects on her grandfather’s story of survival, and the extraordinary role it ended up playing in her marriage. —The Editors
On the morning of June 2, 1942, German soldiers and local police surrounded the Jewish ghetto in Miory, a small town in what is now Belarus. Every Jew was ordered to assemble. They were told that anyone who did not would be shot. Even the sick and elderly were forced to come.
My grandfather, Israel Lulinski, was 7 years old. He was confined in the ghetto with his father, Reb Yosef, his mother, Pearl, and his brothers and sisters. Also there that morning was a young man named Isaac Aron, then 26, a close friend of my grandfather’s family. Both my grandfather and Isaac would be among the few to survive what happened next. And their lives, from that day forward, would be forever intertwined.
