Services will be held today (4/19) for Mira Ryczke Kimmelman, 95, of Oak Ridge. She died peacefully at home on Wednesday, April 17. She was a Holocaust survivor who married another survivor, Max Kimmelman, who had lost his wife and daughter in the Holocaust.
Mira and her father escaped the death camps, but her mother and brother did not survive.
Mira and Max Kimmelman were married in 1946 in Germany. They immigrated to the United States in 1948, and Mira’s father joined them the next year.
The family, now with sons Benno and Gene, came to Oak Ridge in 1964. According to her obituary, Mira Kimmelman became an active volunteer, teaching Hebrew and directing the religious school of the Jewish Congregation of Oak Ridge. She held local, regional and national offices in the Zionist Women’s Group Hadassah. She authored two books, “Echoes from the Holocaust: A Memoir” and “Life Beyond the Holocaust: Memories and Realities,” both published by the University of Tennessee Press.
The funeral service will be held at 1 p.m. Friday, April 19, at the Jewish Congregation of Oak Ridge, 101 W. Madison Lane, with Rabbi Victor Rashkovsky officiating. Burial will follow at the Oak Ridge Jewish Cemetery at the Oak Ridge Memorial Park.