Student turns Holocaust survivors’ words into song

As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, 22- year-old Bar-Ilan University student Naama Winetraub has always found the Shoah to be an important and moving subject in her life. This is why she has decided to take on a special project in the hope of “bridging between the generations of the Holocaust and Israel’s future generations.”

The initiative, a series of songs composed entirely of messages from the Holocaust generation, began after Winetraub came to a significant realization during her summer break last year: “My generation is the last generation that can still talk to people who lived through the Holocaust,” she told The Jerusalem Post. “What we get from them is basically the last thing we will have and it is what the next generation will get from them too. No one thinks about how significant that is.”

In order to keep their memories alive and educate future generations about the Holocaust, Winetraub and dozens of volunteers she has rallied to the cause are working on her initiative, titled “Insights.”

“The kids today are more indifferent to the Holocaust,” Winetraub said, “I think it’s hard to appeal to the young generation on this subject and I believe that music is a great way to achieve that.”

“The volunteers regularly meet survivors and talk to them, ask them questions about what they would like to pass on,” she explained “They are not poor old people, as some may think they are. They are very strong people and we can learn a lot from them.

They have much wisdom to pass on and we are taking those words of wisdom and incorporating them into lyrics for the songs,” she continued.

To write the words for the songs, Winetraub contacted lyricist Noam Chorev – who wrote the song Harel Skaat performed for Israel at the Eurovision competition in 2010 – who immediately agreed to participate.

“We hope to also do a video clip for it and get it out on the radio, but most importantly we are looking for an artist to perform it,” Winetraub said. “Someone who is respectable and who will carry out the message in a gracious way.”