On the yahrzeit of Dov-Ber Schneerson, brother of the leader of our generation, the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, representatives of the Jewish Community of Dnipro gathered at the memorial on the grounds of the regional psychiatric hospital in Igren to honor his memory and the memory of other innocent victims of the Nazi genocide. The joint prayer united the participants in the striving to preserve the connection to the history of the Rebbe’s family, closely tied to our city, and to pass this memory on to future generations.
Dov-Ber Schneerson was the second son of the righteous Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, Chief Rabbi of Yekaterinoslav-Dnepropetrovsk from 1909 to 1939, and Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson. Due to his health condition, he required constant medical care and was undergoing treatment at the hospital in Igren. In the autumn of 1941, he was shot by the Nazis along with other patients.
The Jewish Community of Dnipro has for many years cared for the preservation of the memory of those killed in Igren. A memorial has been created at the site of the mass grave, which is visited by community members and guests of the city. Work on its improvement continues: last year, the Chief Rabbi of Dnipro and the region, Shmuel Kaminezki, and the General Director of the regional psychiatric hospital, Professor Svitlana Moroz, discussed the completion of the first stage of the renovation of the territory, where both a canopy and a convenient approach were arranged, as well as the further reconstruction of the memorial steles.
The memorial ceremony was attended by well-known activists and young leaders of the Jewish Community of Dnipro, including Rabbi Reuven Milman and Rabbi Yom Tov Shufotinsky, as well as Levi Elias, Yaakov Etinburg, Moishe Elias, Binyomin Pinkus, Dovid Pinkus, Yosef Zhilin, Grigoriy Fridman, Elisha Ephraim Prasolov, Mikhoel Pinkus, and Chaim Kolodach. Rabbi Yom Tov Shufotinsky brought books with the order of the memorial prayers, according to which the participants read the Tehillim appropriate for the yahrzeit, including the sections of Psalm 119 corresponding to the letters of the name Dov-Ber. Everyone could join in the reading in the language accessible to them, so that the joint prayer would be meaningful for all those present, although it is best to recite the prayers in lashon hakodesh.
During the ceremony, the Kaddish was recited together, after which the participants performed the Minchah prayer and said lechaim. The approximately one hour spent at the memorial became a time of joint prayer, remembrance, and spiritual unity.
“The initiator of this trip was my husband, Elisha Ephraim Prasolov, and it is very important to us that so many people responded and came together to honor the memory of the Rebbe’s brother and the other people who perished here,” noted Chaya Prasolova, a participant in the ceremony. “Everything took place at a very high level, with great spiritual elevation, and I want to thank from the bottom of my heart everyone who took part, helped with the preparations, and made this event possible – an event that became yet another manifestation of our shared responsibility for preserving memory and faithfulness to the traditions of the united and cohesive Jewish Community of Dnipro under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki.”
