Keeping the Memory of 8-year-old Ruda Chaya Alive

Ruda Chaya Huberband was only eight-years-old when she was murdered by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. She was a child, an innocent who had not yet experienced and lived life. Having died before reaching the age of 12, Ruda Chaya did not get to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah, which signifies the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood.

Ruda Chaya’s cousin, Joyce Kahn from Israel, commemorated her by submitting a Page of Testimony, including a haunting photograph of the young girl with ribbons in her hair, to Yad Vashem in 2008. Joyce serves as a dedicated volunteer for the Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project, assisting Holocaust survivors and others with commemorating the names of Shoah victims.

In March 2013, Joyce was surprised when she was contacted by a young girl named Nicolette Cure who sent her an invitation to her bat mitzvah, explaining that she would be honoring the memory of Ruda Chaya in her upcoming celebration. Nicolette found Joyce thanks to information on the Page of Testimony for her cousin Ruda Chaya.

Joyce related the following via e-mail:

“...On Erev Pesach of this year, I received an invitation to a Bat Mitzva in New York from someone whom I have never heard of before. On reading the invitation properly I could see that during the synagogue service Kaddish was to be said by the Bat Mitzva girl, in the name of Ruda Chaya Huberband a second cousin of mine, who was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1942. The Bat Mitzva was that of Nicolette Cure. Inside the invitation was a letter explaining that she had taken upon herself to remember someone who had died in the Holocaust in order to make her Bat Mitzva more meaningful. This project of remembrance is coordinated by an American based organization called Remember Us, a group that twins children preparing for their Bar/Bat mitzvahs with the memory of children lost in the Holocaust. For me, this took on special meaning because - I thought it interesting that out of 1.5 million children just Ruda Chaya was chosen, and also Ruda's Mother Chava was my Grandfather's youngest sister. Ruda was one of five children who all perished, together with both parents. My Aunt Chava even traveled to London June 1938 for my parents' wedding and I still have the gift she brought. When the family was alive they were all very close. The interesting thing is of all the Huberband children Ruda resembles my sister when my sister was the same age.

May the memory of Ruda Chaya and all the other 6 million Jews be blessed.”

For more information on Yad Vashem's Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project please contact: names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il

For more information on Remember Us please contact: info@remember-us.org