Holocaust-Era Menorah home for Hanukkah

Following tradition, each year the Mansbach family comes to visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum to bring home their menorah to use during the festival of Hanukkah. The menorah was donated to Yad Vashem by the Mansbach family and is on permanent display in the Holocaust History Museum. Today, Yehuda Mansbach, the grandson of Rachel Posner, came to Yad Vashem to take the menorah home where he will light the candles in celebration of Hanukkah. This year, the Hanukkah menorah will also be used in a Hanukkah ceremony for the soldiers in the IDF battalion of Mansbach's son.

Yehudah Mansbach carefully packing up his grandfather’s Hanukkah

 menorah which is on display at Yad Vashem throughout the year,

 except during the festival of Hanukkah. Photo: Marisa Danson    

Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner, Doctor of Philosophy from Halle-Wittenberg University, served from 1924-1933 as the last Rabbi of the community of Kiel, Germany. After Rabbi Posner publicized a protest letter in the local press expressing indignation at the posters that had appeared in the city:  "Entrance to Jews Forbidden," he was summoned by the chairman of the local branch of the Nazi party to participate in a public debate. The event took place under heavy police guard and was reported by the local press. When the tension and violence in the city intensified, the Rabbi responded to the pleas of his community to flee with his wife Rachel and their three children and make their way to Eretz Israel. Before their departure, Rabbi Posner was able to convince many of his congregants to leave and many in fact managed to leave for Eretz Israel or the United States. The Posner family left Germany in 1933 and arrived in Eretz Israel in 1934. Some eighty years later, Akiva and Rachel Posner's descendants continue to light the Hanukkah candles using the same menorah that was brought to Israel from Kiel. 

Both the Hanukkah menorah and the photograph are on display at Yad Vashem. 

The Mansbach family menorah 

 Rachel photographed the menorah from the
 window ledge of the family home looking out on to 
the building across the road 
decorated with Nazi flags just prior to the elections that 
would bring Hitler to power,

On the back of the photograph she wrote (in German),

“Hanukkah 5692,

‘Death to Judah"

So the flag says.

 ‘Judea will live forever,’

 So the light answers.