By Emma Driban, Editor
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Sometimes, a story finds you.
For Nadiv Shapira, it happened in Israel during Yom Ha’atzmaut.
On a visit to the school where his father once served as principal, Nadiv was attending a memorial service when he noticed something new on the school’s memorial wall: six names set apart from the others.
They were the names of fallen Israeli soldiers whose lives had been adopted for remembrance by the school. Each had come to Israel after the Holocaust. Each had lost their family. And each had ultimately died defending the country they had come to call home.
Nadiv recognized the significance of what he was seeing, but it left him with an important question.
Who remembers the people who have no one left to remember them?
That question, first raised in Israel and later brought back to the Delaware Jewish community, has grown into a larger effort to ensure that the stories of Holocaust survivors and deceased Israeli soldiers without surviving family members do not disappear with them.
At its heart is a simple Jewish idea: We remember.
Nadiv’s connection to the story began with his father, who was principal of the Hebrew University High School in Jerusalem. During his visit, Nadiv spoke with a friend and teacher at the school about the six names on the memorial. He learned that the school had “adopted” the names of fallen soldiers who were Holocaust survivors and had no remaining family to commemorate them.
The teacher directed him to a man in Petah Tikvah, Yehuda Sheternfeld, who had spent years collecting the names and stories of these individuals—people sometimes described as the “last remnants,” the final surviving members of their families. Nadiv went to meet him.
What he discovered was more than a list of names. These were people with histories, families, childhoods, struggles and dreams. They had survived the Holocaust, made their way to Israel and built new lives, only to die with no relatives left to carry their memories forward.
Nadiv brought the story home to Delaware and shared it with Rabbi Chuni Vogel of Chabad of Delaware. The timing was especially meaningful. In a class held shortly before Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Vogel was discussing the holiday as a day of remembrance.
Rosh Hashanah is traditionally understood as the birthday of humanity, a yearly anniversary of human life. It is also a time when Jews turn their attention toward those who came before us, remembering the souls who have left this world.
Nadiv posed the question that had been following him since Israel:
What about those who don’t have anyone left to remember them?
That question became an invitation to action.
Though Nadiv was unable to attend the Yom Kippur service that followed, he gave Rabbi Vogel the names he had gathered. Before Yizkor, the rabbi shared the story with the congregation. The service’s traditional remembrance of loved ones took on another dimension: a special remembrance for those whose family lines had been extinguished, leaving Am Yisrael—the Jewish people—as their family.
Then came a moment that Nadiv and Rabbi Vogel could never have anticipated.
After the Yizkor service for soldiers who had died defending Israel, Rabbi Vogel handed the list of names to Rami Goren. Rami, having lost his own father in 1967 during the Six Day War, was a natural choice.
Rami held the Torah and began reading. Then he reached one name.
Chanan Gruber.
He nearly collapsed.
Chanan Gruber had died in 1948 in the arms of Rami’s father, Shlomo Goren. Rami had grown up hearing his father speak about Chanan and remembering his courage. Chanan’s final words had been heartbreaking:
“I’m too young to die. Who will remember me?”
Decades later, there Rami stood with a Torah in his hands, reading the name of the young man who had died in his father’s arms.
The connection was almost impossible to comprehend.
For Rabbi Chuni Vogel, the moment represented something larger than coincidence—it was a reminder of the central Jewish belief that the soul is eternal.
Jewish tradition places tremendous importance on remembering those who have died. We say Kaddish. We recite Yizkor. We speak the names of our parents, grandparents, teachers, and ancestors. We tell their stories.
But what happens when there is no one left to say the name?
The answer, Rabbi Vogel believes, is that the responsibility does not disappear. It becomes ours.
There is a Kabbalistic understanding that the soul is a spark of the Divine—something that exists before the body and which continues after it. The body may leave this world, but the soul does not simply cease to exist.
Rabbi Vogel describes the soul as a flame, saying, “What is a soul? The light of G-d. Like a flame, we can only connect to it when it has a wick and oil. That spark is only able to shine and give warmth and light when there is something concrete to connect it to us.”
A name is one such vessel.
A story is another.
In that sense, Shlomo Goren’s final act toward Chanan did not end in 1948. He carried the memory of the young soldier he held in his arms. He passed that memory to his son. Rami carried it for decades. And eventually, the story reached the sanctuary of Chabad here in Delaware, where Chanan’s name was shared.
Knowing that someone existed is not necessarily enough. Remembering requires action.
That may mean saying a name aloud. Learning someone’s story. Lighting a candle. Reciting Kaddish. Sharing a photograph. Telling a child about someone who died long before they were born.
The goal is not simply to keep a historical record. It is to maintain a relationship between generations.
That idea is especially powerful for the approximately 150 names that have been collected as part of this effort. Some names have already been shared with Chabad congregations around the world, giving communities the opportunity to “adopt” individuals who no longer have family members to say Kaddish or tell their stories.
But Nadiv and Rabbi Vogel believe there is more to be done.
They envision a book that would bring these individuals back into view—not simply as names on a memorial wall, but as human beings. Their stories could tell how they survived the Holocaust, how they made their way to Israel, the lives they built there and, ultimately, how they died.
The hope is that their memories could then travel far beyond Israel, reaching synagogues and Jewish communities around the world.
The Jewish calendar offers many opportunities to remember. Yom HaZikaron calls us to remember those who gave their lives defending Israel. Rosh Hashanah asks us to consider the meaning of human life and the generations that came before us.
Rabbi Vogel describes Yom Kippur almost as though a curtain is briefly opened, allowing us to glimpse a reality that exists beyond what we ordinarily see. Eventually the curtain closes again—but what we saw changes how we understand the world.
The same can be true of remembrance. We may never know the full impact of an act we take today. A name we speak could be remembered by someone else decades from now. A story we share could inspire an act of kindness in another generation. A memory we preserve could become the link that connects someone to a person they never had the chance to meet.
Chanan Gruber’s story is one example. His final question—Who will remember me?—was asked in a moment when he could not have known what the future would hold. He could not have known that the man holding him would carry his name forward. He could not have known that a child listening to his father’s stories would one day recognize his name on a list of forgotten soldiers.
And perhaps that is the answer to Chanan’s question.
Am Yisrael will remember.
Not because we knew you. Not because we shared your home or your childhood or your life.
We remember you because you were here.
Because you were someone’s child. Someone’s friend. Because you survived when so many others did not. Because you made a home in a new land. Because you stood up to protect it. Because your life mattered.
And because in Judaism, the absence of family does not mean the absence of belonging.
If there is no one left to say your name, Am Yisrael can say it.
If there is no one left to tell your story, we can tell it.
If there is no one left to carry your memory, we can carry it together.
That may be the most sacred part of remembrance: the realization that we do not inherit only the stories of the people we knew. We inherit the responsibility to remember those we never had the chance to know.
Nadiv’s story began with six names on a memorial wall in Israel. It traveled through a teacher, a collector of names, a rabbi, a father and son, and eventually across the ocean to Delaware.
So, when we gather this Rosh Hashanah, when we hear the shofar and think about the lives that have come before us, perhaps we can make room for those whose names no one else remembers.
Perhaps we can be the voice that says:
You were here.
You matter.
You are remembered.
To learn more about Nadiv and Rabbi Vogel’s “Last Remnant” project, and how you can help keep the memories of those without families who have since left us, please reach out to nadivshapiramd@gmail.com.
Header Photo Credit: Baruch Niv
