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Hundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor on Yom HaShoah

With no immediate family to mourn Esther Greizer, the community flocked to her funeral.

By JNS

Hundreds gathered in Haifa during Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) on Monday to attend the funeral of a Holocaust survivor who died the previous night.

Esther Greizer, 95, a native of Hungary who survived the Nazi genocide, did not have any immediate family to mourn her passing. A social media message went out to the community and crowds descended on the cemetery for her burial.

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Greizer’s great-nephew Yochai Gringlick wrote on Facebook that she was unable to bear children because of “medical” experiments performed on her at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

“It didn’t prevent Esti from marrying the late Gershon and living a happy life full of love and giving,” Gringlick wrote.

“Because she didn’t have children, we were like grandchildren to her, even though we were her sister’s great-grandchildren.”

Gringlick said that there would not be a shiva, the traditional seven days of mourning in Judaism for immediate family members of the deceased.

“She doesn’t have children and her brothers are all already dead. There will only be a funeral,” he wrote.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is an annual day of observance in Israel to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during World War II.