Born in 1925 on a farm in the village of Vysni Remete (Upper Remety) near Beregszasz, Czechoslovakia (now Berehove, Ukraine) in the mountainous Muncasz region of Carpato-Ruthenia, Morris Hollender shares a Jewish culture that is as vital as it is ancient. Descended from Sephardim on his father’s side and Ashkenazim on his mother’s side, Mr. Hollender survived Auschwitz and lived in postwar Czechoslavakia (in the Sudeten region) before emigrating to the US in 1968 along with his wife Edith, also a survivor. He keeps the cultural and religious world that he grew up with alive by serving as baal-korey (Torah reader) and baal-tfile (lay cantor) at Temple Beth Israel, a traditional egalitarian congregation in Waltham, Massachusetts, and generously sharing stories, songs, jokes, and folk-wisdom with anyone who will listen.
Courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, whose Lee & Alfred Hutt Discovery Gallery exhibit features the stories and music of Morris Hollender.