On Holocaust Remembrance Day, a suburban Chicago survivor remembers

Ralph Rehbock, who was born in Gotha, Germany, and fled to Chicago with his family in 1938 to escape the Holocaust, is taking part in a new social media campaign to pass on testimony of survivors through their children and grandchildren. (Pat Nabong/Sun-Times)

WASHINGTON — Tuesday marked Yom HaShoah — that’s the Hebrew term for Holocaust Remembrance Day — and this year it comes as anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial remain on the rise.

That’s why the stories of people like Ralph Rehbock,  88, who lives in Northbrook — whose family fled Nazi Germany to start a new life in Chicago’s Hyde Park community when he was 4 – are important to be told and retold.