A June 9-15, 1983, article detailed the name change of the Washington-area organization of Holocaust survivors, a group that no longer appears active due to the deaths of its lay leaders.
Club Shalom was established in 1960 to preserve the memory of the 6 million Jewish people killed in the Holocaust. In 1983, the organization rebranded as Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Friends of Greater Washington, according to The Jewish Week article.
The new group aimed to include not only Holocaust survivors, but people from “all walks of life” who are supporters and friends of survivors.
The social group and support system served as a liaison between the American Gathering committee and Holocaust-related events in D.C. It also fundraised for Israel and was soon to begin work on videotapes for Holocaust archives.
Club Shalom’s founder and president, Holocaust survivor Abraham Malnik, said the group was seeking new members. “Many of us are dying off and moving away,” he told The Jewish Week in 1983.
Today, Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Friends of Greater Washington is no longer active, a spokesperson for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum confirmed to Washington Jewish Week on June 9. Malnik, a former Silver Spring resident, died in 2007 at his Rehoboth Beach residence.
Its two co-presidents have since died: D.C. resident Nesse Godin in 2024 at the age of 95 and Potomac’s Flora Singer in 2009 at the age of 78. And secretary Regina Spiegel died in 2019 in Columbia, Maryland.
The original group was absorbed by two local groups: The Last Generation, which began as a child survivor group, and The Generations After, a metropolitan D.C.-area gathering place created in 1979, according to the USHMM spokesperson.
Today’s local Holocaust survivors can benefit from JSSA’s Holocaust Survivors program in Rockville and participate in programs through USHMM in D.C. Holocaust survivors and their descendants in the region can join the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Holocaust Speakers’ Bureau, which sends survivors and their descendants to share their stories at local schools and organizations.
zbell@midatlanticmedia.com
