***image1***Justice of memory is the topic that Rabbi Robert Kirzner will talk about during the 415th Base Support Battalion’s Days of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust Ceremony 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Armstrong Community Club, Vogelweh Housing.
“I’m going to focus on the justice of memory and how important it is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, and how it serves the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust,” said Rabbi Kirzner, blood donor recruiter, U.S. Army Europe Blood Donor Center, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
Rabbi Kirzner will be the observance’s keynote speaker.
“I was very touched to be asked to be the speaker,” he said. “I think it is a very awesome responsibility, and I feel that responsibility very keenly because what I say will hopefully be a motivation for other people.”
Rabbi Kirzner volunteers as the official key leader of the Landstuhl Jewish Congregation, one of the 415th BSB’s Chaplain’s Office religious programs. This congregation started about 18 months ago.
“A number of us in the 415th BSB area didn’t have services to attend, so we started our own congregation with the support of the Chaplain’s Office,” said Army Col. David Rubenstein, the commander, 30th Medical Brigade, Heidelberg.
“We are very fortunate to have a Rabbi who is a family member,” said Colonel Rubenstein, who was the first official key leader for the Landstuhl Jewish Congregation.
Rabbi Kirzner attended the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute, Cincinnati, which is the oldest Rabbinic seminary in the United States. He was ordained in 1975, and for 15 years, he was the Rabbi for four congregations in the United States and Canada, before becoming a jeweler for almost 20 years.
Since then, Rabbi Kirzner, a native of Toronto, has traveled with his active-duty wife to Walter Reed, Washington, D.C., Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio and now here.
“This has been one of the most happiest and productive times of my life,” said Rabbi Kirzner. “They (the Landstuhl Jewish Congregation) want to study and pray together.
“For a Rabbi, that’s a tremendously rewarding thing for me to be with people who really want what I have to offer them,” he said.
“He really likes the military life,” said Army Maj. Rosemarie Kirzner, chief of reference, Chemical Laboratory, LRMC.
She also said that it makes sense to have her husband speak at Wednesday’s Holocaust Remembrance observance.
“You want a speaker who can deliver the message to people who are not Jewish, who didn’t lose family in the Holocaust and who weren’t touched personally with this event,” said Major Kirzner. “His job in that type of situation is to make it personal and to deliver the message to people who didn’t experience it.”
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