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On today’s episode of The Confluence: Rabbi Jeffrey Myers describes how his congregation is still healing since the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue; Carol Sikov Gross, president of the congregation, explains how an architect with family ties to the Jewish community is helping restore and refurbish the synagogue; the head of the Community Day School, Avi Baran Munro, reflects on student and faculty actions to mourn the attack; and journalist and author Mark Oppenheimer explains why he focused on the neighborhood of Squirrel Hill in his book about how the community came together.
Shulamit Bastacky, right, speaks at Community Day School in 2018. Photo courtesy of Community Day School
Shulamit Bastacky’s childhood was spent in hiding. As an adult, though, she was anything but covert.
During her years in Pittsburgh, Bastacky, a Holocaust survivor who died Jan. 1 at 79, spoke with thousands of students in scores of public settings. The conversations, which often recounted Bastacky’s haunting childhood, were unforgettable. In a classroom, at a library or over lunch, listeners learned how two months prior to Bastacky’s birth on Aug. 25, 1941, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Nazis occupied the Lithuanian capital and quickly began murdering its Jewish population. Terrified about their newborn’s chance at survival, Bastacky’s parents, Simon and Dora, gave their baby away. Bastacky was taken in by a Polish Catholic nun, who, at great risk and for nearly three years, kept the Jewish child hidden in a cellar.