09/04/2026
Miriam Bar-Lev will be one of six survivors lighting torches at the Central State Ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem.
Miriam (Daisy) Bar-Lev was born in 1936 in Tel Aviv. Due to the unrest in Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine), her parents moved to Amsterdam, her father’s birthplace.
In 1940, N**i Germany occupied the Netherlands, and by 1942, Jews were forced to wear the yellow star. Six-year-old Daisy wore hers with pride, wanting to be like the adults. That summer, the deportations began. Daisy and her parents went into hiding but were eventually caught and sent to the Westerbork transit camp. Six months later, they were transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Her father fell ill and died there; Daisy and her mother were left to endure hours of shivering in lineups, barefoot and starving, as those around them collapsed and died. At night, anyone who stepped outside the barracks was shot on sight.
After two years, they were forced onto cattle cars. "I thought that was the end for us," Daisy later recalled. The "Lost Train" wandered for nearly two weeks before being bombed from the air. Many passengers, including Daisy and her mother, contracted typhus, and many succumbed to disease and starvation.
In April 1945, the passengers were liberated by the Red Army. Daisy and her mother returned to Amsterdam, and in 1946, they immigrated to Erez Israel. Daisy settled on Kibbutz Ginegar and changed her name to Miriam. She pursued a career in nursing, working in the profession until her retirement.
Miriam and her late husband, Zvi, raised three sons and have seven grandchildren.
