Holocaust Survivor, Mother of Wise Member Honored by State of California

Last month, Stephen Wise Temple Board member Irene Boujo and her sister Genie Benson accepted a posthumous honor for their mother, Holocaust survivor Sidonia Lax, on the floor of the California State Senate.

Lax, who passed away in December, was recognized as the 2023 Yom HaShoah Honoree for her tireless commitment to Holocaust education. Her motto: “I’m not a survivor; I’m a thriver!” She shared her survivor testimony with Wise on Feb. 16, 2017.

Sidonia accompanied thousands of teens and adults on the Los Angeles BJE March of the Living for over a decade, sharing her positivity and boundless energy and inspiring those around her. She was so impactful that the BJE established a scholarship fund in her honor, so that more teens are given the opportunity to participate in the March of the Living program.

Born in Poland in 1927, Sidonia and her family were forced into hiding when the Nazis arrived in their town 1941. She endured three months in a ghetto bunker,  lost both her parents, was hunted by SS dogs, and finally brought to Auschwitz at the age of 17. In 1945, two days after Allied bombs fell on a train carrying Sidonia and other prisoners in Potsdam, she was liberated by the Russians.

State Senator Henry Stern, who represents the 27th District, conferred the honor upon her on April 17, writing:

“In every step, Sidionia embodied joyous survival. Her practicality, her lists, her doggedness, her stubbornness, her determination to show up … marching to wherever and whenever the mission demanded her … whether the mission demand she be in Poland in the summer, marching and coaching along hundreds and ultimately thousands of young leaders, transforming a land of horror to one of searing memory.

“Or the mission demanded her on the streets of Sherman Oaks, marching around her neighborhood, scrutinizing and thereby elevating every last detail of the community around her, from a Togo’s about to close up shop to local candidates and elected officials eager to earn her friendship and perhaps avoid her winnowing eye.

“That mission somehow brought her to my eighth grade classroom, and on that day her mission, like so many other young leaders she mentored and trained with tough, abounding love, became my mission.  She always said, ‘I am not a survivor; I am a thriver.’

“May her memory be a blessing, and may this Yom HaShoah reinvigorate the collective fighting spirit and continue attempting to measure the inestimable impact of a generation of survivors, which if we do our jobs, shall never have to be again.”