Students Reach Out to Yazidi Victims of ISIS

from Greenwich Time:

It was by the silence that Rabbi Yossi Deren knew his students were ready to reach out to a victim of ISIS’s genocide against the Yazidi people.

“It wasn’t what they said. It was their silence and their intense concentration as they heard Don tell the story,” Deren said. “It shows that care and compassion is inherent to every human being but that it needs to be cultivated.”

Students at the Sunday Hebrew School at Chabad of Greenwich, Connecticut, have written cards and letters of support and kindness to Yasmin, a 16-year-old girl who is currently in a hospital in Germany.

Held captive along with more than 1,000 other women and children after a 2014 ISIS attack on the Yazidi community in northern Iraq and after multiple rapes, she doused herself with gasoline and set herself on fire to be less attractive to her attackers.

The story was first brought to the attention of Chabad by Greenwich resident and journalist Don Snyder, who became aware of Yasmin’s plight through his own reporting about ISIS atrocities. He had interviewed Jan Kizilhan, a German trauma expert who has worked with girls like Yasmin.

“As a Jew, I have always felt a special obligation to expose the suffering of minorities,” Snyder said. “ISIS has been waging a war of genocide against the Yazidi people.”

Click here to continue reading at Greenwich Time.