Dear Ben Lesser,

I wanted to reiterate my extreme gratitude for your wonderful words and tremendous presentation. This will be a day I remember as long as my aging mind permits. You are doing, truly, a heroic thing by enlightening people of the atrocities and genocide that took place against the Jewish people. I can only imagine how hard it must be to recollect all the terrible things you saw and went through. To surface those memories in the hope of educating younger generations is something to be admired by all. I only hope I can go through my life with as much strength, honor, poise, and nobility you have went through your own life with.

I will tell my kids of this day and your story with complete remembrance or Zachor. I will make sure they understand the strength of you as well as the many others who endured the same thing. The only thing I regret is not getting a picture with you. Because when I tell my kids of this, I would love to be able to take out a picture, point and say, "This is what a hero looks like kids. Not only because of what he endured but because of the strength he exhibits in educating others of those endurance's".

Thank you again for teaching and enlightening me more than any textbook, google search, or professor could ever possibly come close to. I will never forget and always cherish this day and your words.

Sincerely and always grateful,

C. Abrahamson

I just wanted to say "Thank You" again for coming and speaking to my students at Southwest Behavior Program. I truly feel that your message resonates with them. I have worn the pin a few times and see it almost everyday in my jewelry box. I just have to hold it and touch it and your story stays with me. With the pin, I feel as I can remember every word, every part, every picture. It is almost as if all of those stories, of everyone who was murdered, are held within that tiny pin, begging to be told. It is a constant reminder of many conflicting things in life and in the Holocaust such as murder and new life, despair and hope, defeat and triumph and even the Holocaust, with all the horror there was still some good done. There were those who tried to help and those that survived, how many of them did such wonderful things with their lives. So although the pin makes me feel a little sad it also gives me hope and a sense of duty to do everything I can to insure that genocide stops and to help everyone remember what happened.

Thank you again and I hope that we can hear your story again next year.

Tiffany Dawn Valencia
Southwest Behavioral Program

I am Gina Klonoff, former president of the Speakers Bureau of the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada. For more than a decade it was my responsibility to recruit my fellow members to appear before civic, religious, social or educational groups to give their eye witness accounts of what they suffered. Most of them checked the “no” box in the polling questionnaire I distributed. When I asked individuals for the reason they refused to speak, I was usually told “Oh, no. I couldn’t talk about that. I’ve never talked about that. I haven’t even told my children what happened to me, it was such a long time ago.”

Nevertheless, a small core of willing speakers evolved from our growing membership. Ben Lesser, a survivor from Poland, was among the earliest ones. After the reports I received from his audiences, as well as his own reaction, I realized that in him I had launched not only an informative reporter, but also an eloquent oratory talent which would have done justice to the ancient Cicero. Again and again he told his story with such powerful details and eloquence, that afterward audiences refused to leave, but stayed on to ask questions. His host of “thank you letters” from students and adult audiences alike would fill suitcases. The intense Interest also made him realize how much the world needed this information, and how much they valued it.

Even though Ben Lesser was naturally gratified by his success, he believed that to engrave the knowledge of this Jewish catastrophe more deeply and permanently in the minds and hearts of his audiences, something “tangible” was needed.

To that effect, Ben Lesser conceived the idea of the “Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Pin”. It is a small gold pin which could be worn on a lapel, carried in a pocket, lie on a shelf and yet always serve as a reminder of the 20th Century Holocaust unleashed upon six million Jews because of their religion. It would always say “Zachor” in Hebrew, and mean “REMEMBER”.

As a Holocaust survivor, I myself support him whole heartedly in his endeavor. I hope that more and more people will also want to support his goal, so that the six million innocent Jewish men, women and children, viciously murdered, will not have died in vain, and that the pin becomes a potent warning against the evil and hatred which might yet reappear long after no eye witnesses are left to warn the world with their reports.

Gina Klonoff
President
Holocaust Survivors Group Of Southern Nevada