A webinar entitled “Not Entirely Forgotten” devoted to the fate of the Polish Jewish officers of Katyn took place on 4 April 2024. It was organized by the Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide centers and chaired by Jakub Nowakowski, its director, and the vice-president of the Katyn Foundation for Families of Jewish Origin. The President of the Katyn Foundation, Luc Albinski, participated in the well-attended webinar along with Giora Bar Nir who movingly described the fate of his father, Emil Emanuel Rabiner, an engineer and a Lieutenant in the Polish Army, who was murdered in the forests of Katyn.

Giora survived the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) and escaped at age six to live on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw before ending up in a village called Ruda Ós near Radzymin under a false identity. After the war, Giora spent time in Warsaw and Lodz in the care of an uncle and a family friend from his time in the Ghetto before emigrating to France where he spent two years in an orphanage near Lyons. In 1948 he left for Israel arriving at the age of 12 during the War of Independence in his new homeland. Giora adopted a new name, completed his studies, and embarked on an illustrious career in the Israeli Airforce attaining the rank of a Lieutenant Colonel fighting in several wars as a navigator. Giora with his now-deceased friend Janina Goldhar worked on developing a list of all the Polish Jewish officers that were killed in Katyn.  With some persistent effort, he also got Yad Vashem to recognize the Katyn victims.

View the recording here