The international charity Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund, whose mission is to heal the trauma of children who are victims of terror, is hosting a virtual tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau, called “From the Ashes of the Holocaust to the Rebirth of Israel.”
The tour, which will be streamed virtually on Wednesday, July 19, at 11:00 AM (EST), is an interactive virtual visit to the world’s most infamous concentration camp and will be hosted jointly with Rabbi David Abrahamovitz. It was deliberately scheduled to take place during the Jewish Nine Days – a period of mourning that begins with the a fast day on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, and intensifies from the beginning of the month of Av until the 9th of Av, one of the most solemn days in the Jewish calendar, which commemorates the destruction of both Temples as well as other tragedies that struck the Jewish people on this date.
Visitors will be able to view the site where Nazi doctors performed the selections, determining the fate of prisoners destined for the gas chambers, see the ruins of the crematoria and hear childrens’ testimonies of what it was like to experience Auschwitz.
Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund’s founder David Rubin is himself no stranger to the terrors that affect the Jewish people on a daily basis.
In 2001 American-born David Rubin was mayor of the Israeli town of Shiloh, and as he was driving home one evening from Jerusalem with his three-year-old son, his car was ambushed by three Palestinian terrorists. He was wounded in the leg and his son was shot in the head, but the bullet missed his brain stem by millimeters and he survived the attack.
“Thank God, my son is physically okay now,” Rubin says. “But he is still dealing with the emotional trauma to this day.”
Transformed by the experience, Rubin wanted to build something positive after the event. In 2004, he established Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund in order to help children living in the biblical heartland to recover from trauma. The organization supports vital therapeutic, educational, and recreational programs- particularly in the Shiloh bloc of communities in the heartland of Biblical Israel, where the children have suffered terribly from the terrorism of the past few years.
Rubin is an active philanthropist and author, who has written seven books, including “God, Israel and Shiloh”, “Trump and the Jews”, and “Confronting Radicals: What America Can Learn from Israel”.
Rabbi David Abrahamovitz is the founder and director of “The World That Was” Poland Tours. His tours take people from all over the world on life-changing visits to Poland, connecting participants to one thousand years of Jewish history in the country, focusing on pre-war Polish Jewry, its demise during the Holocaust, and its miraculous post-war rebuilding.
To sign up for the virtual tour, visit https://www.israelchildren.org/auschwitz-tour-july-2023/
