October 12, 2018 3 Cheshvan 5779 Volume 74, Issue 19
S O U T H E R N A R I Z O N A ’ S A WA R D - W I N N I N G J E W I S H N E W S PA P E R
Arts & Culture ........................11 Classifieds .............................24 Commentary ..........................6 Community Calendar...........28 Local .....................2, 3, 5, 7, 9, .................... 11, 14, 16, 17, 19 National ................................24 Obituaries .............................30 Our Town .............................. 31 P.S. ........................................27 Synagogue Directory...........30 World .................................... 12
DEBE CAMPBELL AJP Assistant Editor
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’ve always considered Tucson Hebrew Academy as my fourth child and this community to be my family,” Ronnie Sebold recently told the AJP. With hands-on involvement within the school for 37 of its 45- year history, she has dedicated a lifetime to nurturing the academy. For this dedication to education and the community, THA will honor Sebold next month with its annual Tikkun Olam Award. The Nov. 4 event also will be a celebration of THA’s 45th anniversary. “We select an honoree for their work beyond THA,” says Jon BenAsher, THA head of school, “for
Photo courtesy Ronnie Sebold
Celebrations............ 17-23 Pets .......................14-16
THA dinner to honor Ronnie Sebold for community devotion
Brooke Sebold, left, with her mother, Ronnie Sebold, at a Sept. 29 tribute event in Denver for trauma surgeon Ernest E. Moore, who saved Brooke’s life 25 years ago after a skiing accident. Brooke will be the keynote speaker at Tucson Hebrew Academy’s Tikkun Olam Award dinner Nov. 4.
their work in the greater Jewish community and beyond. Ronnie’s many years actively involved with
Jewish Tucson organizations, events, and people have been an effort from her heart and soul.
She’s also done significant work at THA, and has been committed to the Jewish day school.” Sebold began volunteering at THA when her first child, Jordan, entered first grade in 1981. She says she chose a Jewish school so she wouldn’t have to add Hebrew school to secular education. “By the time my daughter Brooke attended, there was a different motivation. It was because it was the best education you could give a child,” she says. An educator herself, Sebold earned her bachelor of arts, cum laude, in elementary education from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and a master’s in education as a reading specialist from the University of Michigan. With four years of See THA, page 2
YMCA ball to honor Shoah survivors, WWII and Korean War vets PHYLLIS BRAUN AJP Executive Editor
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olfgang Hellpap, 87, a child survivor of the Holocaust from Berlin, Germany, tells his remarkable story with matter-of-fact simplicity. He’s told it many times during the past 13 years he’s lived in Tucson, to high school students and other groups. “I want people and especially young people to know what happened. This is history … it has to be conveyed so that this kind of evil should never happen,” he told the AJP recently. Hellpap will be among Holocaust survivors honored at the YMCA of Southern Arizona’s 2018 Community Military Ball on Nov. 10, along with World War II and Korean War veterans, and
Photo courtesy Christians United for Israel-Arizona
INSIDE
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Holocaust survivor Wolfgang Hellpap lights a memorial candle at the community Yom HaShoah commemoration on May 1, 2016, at the Tucson Jewish Community Center.
a Council of Heroes representing various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Born in 1931, the son of a Polish Jewish father and a Christian mother who never married, Hell-
pap says his father left Germany “before everything started.” Hellpap’s first experience of anti-Semitism came in 1937 when he was in the second grade. “They found out I was officially Jewish,” he says. “They kicked me out of school in the middle of class, when the teacher said she had my name on a list and told me to leave. That was the law. All of a sudden the other kids were throwing rocks and spitting at me, so I had to run as fast as I could. I was crying.” His mother’s landlady wouldn’t let Hellpap stay in her room, so he was forced to find shelter on his own — sometimes with relatives for a few days, sometimes hiding in old sheds in parks. Eventually, the police caught him and placed him in a Jewish orphanage, basically a little camp, See YMCA, page 4
CANDLELIGHTING TIMES: October 12 ... 5:37 p.m. • October 19 ... 5:29 p.m. • October 26 ... 5:21 p.m.