While standing inside the gas chamber at Auschwitz on Wednesday, alongside families of hostages and families bereaved in the October 7 attack, survivors Michael and Faina Kupershtein called on the Israeli government to act for the release of their grandson, Bar Kupershtein, who was abducted from the Nova music festival.
“I demand from our government, not to see left or right, but to help us and our people. These are our children and yours,” Michael said, his voice trembling. “Together, we will win.”
Speaking directly to his grandson, Michael said, “Bar, you’re like me, you’re strong. You must get out, and not be afraid or cry. We’ll help you however we can, and we will succeed. Our people are strong. Our people will help you, they will help me, they will help all the Jews—we are warriors today.”
Faina, Bar’s grandmother, with whom he had lived in recent years before his abduction, added, “The people of Israel live.”
Ora Rubinstein, Bar’s aunt, spoke about her father Michael’s Holocaust story.
“My father was born in Chișinău in 1941, and a few months later, the Germans bombed their city,” she said. “His mother and he, when he was just a few months old, fled by train toward Russia, and even there, they were bombed.” Michael’s father was drafted into the Soviet army and captured by the Germans.
“They hid in small villages, fleeing again and again on different trains. They didn’t stop running for a year and a half, starving, nearly killed in bombings—through Stalingrad—until they finally reached Azerbaijan,” she continued.
Michael’s father managed to escape German captivity and reunited with his family in Azerbaijan after many months. However, because his return to the Soviet army was delayed by two weeks, he was imprisoned for 10 years for desertion.
“After the war, my grandmother took my father back to Russia, to Chernivtsi, where she lived alone for 10 years without knowing what had happened to her husband. After Stalin died, they released my grandfather, and by 1967, they immigrated to Israel,” Ora recounted.
Over the years, the Kupershtein family did not speak of the escape, the hunger, the bombings, the mortal danger—or certainly not the captivity and imprisonment. “I didn’t know the full story. I knew something had happened, that my grandfather was in Siberia, but not the story itself, not my grandmother’s bravery,” Rubinstein said with pain. “And now, as if all that weren’t enough, Bar is in captivity.”
Today, on Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, Faina and Michael will march in the March of the Living, as their grandson marks 566 days in Hamas captivity in Gaza after being taken from the Nova festival.
