Ariel Lippa, fourth from left — who is using Facebook as an organizing tool for a group commemorating the Bielski Brigade — is shown at get-together in August with other grandchildren of Bielski Brigade survivors, from left, Jordan Bielsky, Jessica Bielski, Rachel Bielski, Melissa Goldfischer, Meryle Goldfischer, and Amanda Lapidus.
Photo courtesy Lida Memorial Society
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September 23, 2009
Some grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are using the modern technology of the Internet to keep alive both ethnic pride and the memories of their grandparents’ bitter experience.
Using Facebook to link up with one another, some 150 “third-generation survivors” gathered at a club on Manhattan’s Lower East Side Aug. 30. They came from many parts of the tristate area to connect and raise funds for the Lida Memorial Society.
The group was formed in honor of the World War II partisans who battled the Nazis in the Lida Forest in what was then Poland and is now Belarus.
Among those who joined the grandchildren’s gathering were six descendants of the Bielski brothers, who, after their parents’ deaths in 1941, organized Jewish partisans to fight Nazis.
“Facebook has been the ultimate tool for me to promote the society,” said Ariel Lippa, who organized the event.
He is the grandson of Ann Monka, who was born in Lida and joined the underground warriors of the Bielski Brigade. They survived in the woods, committed many acts of sabotage against the Nazis, and helped save some 1,200 Jews.
Both Lippa and his grandmother reside in Montville.
He is an educational adviser to the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. He also teaches Holocaust studies to sixth-graders at Temple Beth Ahm Yisrael in Springfield and is the United Synagogue Youth adviser at Pine Brook Jewish Center.
Monka is active in the Holocaust Council of MetroWest.
Lippa is determined that her story, and those of other resistors, be told and retold.
“Usually, education on the Holocaust is about how Jews were sent to concentration camps like sheep to slaughter. But it is important to focus on resistance — how Jews did fight back and survived,” Lippa told NJ Jewish News.
He is continuing to use Facebook as an organizing tool for a new organization called “Defiance,” borrowing the name of the 2008 studio film on the Bielski Brigade. He estimates its current membership at 1,500.
“We have a memorial society, we celebrate the film Defiance, and we appreciate education on resistance and the partisan experience,” said Lippa. “We bring together the survivors from the forests and the people who resisted. But obviously, as time goes on, these people are passing away, and the meetings have been getting smaller and smaller. So we in the third generation are continuing to hold the torch and keep the light shining in honor of our grandparents.”
Lippa said 12 of his cousins and friends have joined him in perpetuating the link to their families’ grim past. He said his heritage has grown more meaningful with each passing year.
“As far as I can remember, I was always going to meetings of the survivors. As a child I would walk in holding my mom’s hand. I used to be bored and never understood what it was. But it became more and more important,” he said. “Now, it is a part of me and part of all of us.”
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