Yom HaShoah 5785

Have you ever wondered what clothes Holocaust survivors put on immediately after they were liberated? Or where they spent their first few nights?

A tallit worn by the late Zesa Starr, who was liberated from Dachau, provides answers.

The tallit, which his daughter Helen Starr recently brought in to the Intermountain Jewish News office, was given to her father by an American GI who helped liberate Dachau. It came from the clothing that Nazis had collected from Jewish prisoners upon their arrival at the infamous, first, concentration camp.

Who that tallit originally belonged to, the Starr family never knew, but the tallit was used by Zesa throughout his life and even served as the chuppah for his wedding in Bergen-Belsen to fellow survivor Fanny Piekarski.

And those first nights? Zesa was housed in a German family’s home in the city of Dachau. Shortly after, he wound up at the DP camp that Bergen-Belsen had become.

This Shabbat, Helen Starr will participate in a special service, April 26, at BMH-BJ, commemorating the Holocaust.

It is the second year the synagogue is marking a Shabbat coinciding with Yom HaShoah.

Last year, the congregation created a temporary exhibit of items that belonged to local Jewish Holocaust survivors. Starr loaned items of her parents to that exhibit. She hopes that Denver will develop a permanent Holocaust exhibition open to the public.

Starr’s parents were local activists for Holocaust education. Their advocacy began immediately after the war when Zesa was a member of a committee at Bergen-Belsen that assembled a book documenting the Holocaust.

Among the documents: Pictures of Nazi barbarism that Zesa found in the home he slept in just after liberation.

And the clothes Zesa and his fellow committee members wore? Like the tallit, also items taken from Jewish prisoners, which Zesa, a tailor, mended.

In 2025, Zesa Starr’s second-hand tallit — and its black velvet bag, so worn the Jewish star is faded — links Jews to an unknown Holocaust survivor.

Zesa Starr was liberated at Dachau. He had arrived there on a death train sent from Buchenwald. It was the death train that the men of the 157th infantry regiment of the 45th, comprised in part by the Colorado National Guard and led by Gen. Felix Sparks, discovered when approaching the camp. It was the train in the coal yard on the edges of the camp, filled with bodies, many dead, some alive — among them Starr. It was the train that soldiers said they never could forget and led to the extrajudicial shooting by US forces of SS officers.

Years later, Starr and Sparks found each other in Colorado and formed a lifelong friendship. From two opposite sides — liberated and liberator — they shared one life-altering experience.

Helen Starr grew up hearing her parents’ stories and those of their fellow survivors with whom they socialized. Someone like Felix Sparks wasn’t only a name, but a person she remembers.

She sees her identity as a second generation survivor. With very few living Holocaust survivors in Denver, it’s up to her generation to continue sharing their relatives’ stories. It’s why she, together with her mother before she died, was part of the effort behind Colorado House Bill 1336 that mandates Holocaust education in public schools.

During Passover, ahead of Yom HaShoah, she spoke at a local high school about centuries-old religious prejudices.

She also cautioned the students to be on the lookout for discrimination in today’s world. “I keep telling them, history has not changed. It repeats with new tactics,” says Starr.

She is deeply concerned about deportations by the Trump administration to a detention facility in El Salvador, broad generalizations made about groups of immigrants and the removal of Holocaust content from Pentagon web pages as part of that department chief’s focus on excising DEI policies (see IJN, April 11).

Starr also warns students of assuming that what they read on social media is factually correct, and tells them of growing Holocaust denialism online.

Still, she leaves the students with optimism: “I remind them, You are the future, you can make a difference.

“Please be the light in our ever-changing world. And remember,” she concludes, quoting her mother, “Your character is your only true possession.”

© IJN 2025