When I speak at schools or synagogues, students often ask me, “Are you a Holocaust survivor?”

I answer, “No. I am a redemption survivor—a member of an almost extinct generation that witnessed Jewish rebirth and redemption.” If they ask me to explain, I don’t begin with history. I begin with a song. It is a Hanukkah song we learned in kindergarten, sung by Zionist pioneers in the 1940s:

No miracle happened to us.
We found no vessel of oil.
We carved the rock till we bled.
And there was light.