In a final message delivered from beyond the grave, Hollywood icon Rob Reiner delivered a stirring plea for “resilience” to a global gathering of Holocaust survivors at Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Thursday.
The pre-recorded video, filmed just weeks before he and his wife were fatally slain in their Brentwood home, was an emotional centerpiece of the annual International Holocaust Survivors Night.
In his final address, Reiner spoke of his aunt, who was in Auschwitz, and his wife Michele, whose “whole family died there,” with the exception of her mother.
Reiner — an outspoken liberal activist — didn’t shy away from politics, linking the historical trauma of the Holocaust to the current state of the nation.
Rob Reiner speaks out with a message of ‘resilience’ for an annual Holocaust Survivors Night in a video pre-recorded just weeks before he and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were murdered. Claims Conference
“I know the theme of the evening is resilience, and if ever we needed to be resilient, it’s now,” Reiner said. “We’re living in a time where what’s happening in our country is scary and reminiscent of what we’ve seen happen in the past. And we just hope that we can all survive this and that we can hold on to our democracy.”
Nick Reiner, the couple’s son, is accused of killing his parents last weekend in a brutal slaying after displaying bizarre behavior for years.
The message took on a tragic new weight for the roughly 100 survivors, with the event already shrouded in heaviness following the massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, less than a week ago.
The terrorist attack claimed the lives of 15 people, including two rabbis, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl.
Nick Reiner is accused of murdering his parents and is currently being held in a jail medical facility at Twin Towers in Los Angeles. Getty Images for Teen Vogue
The video also includes pre-recorded messages from Billy Crystal, Barbra Streisand, Jason Alexander, Julianna Margulies, Debra Messing and Jamie Lee Curtis.
In his video, Crystal described Hanukkah as a magical time for children while acknowledging the childhoods robbed from the survivors.
“Sadly, your youth was not the happiest of times,” Crystal said.
“Now, like the miracle of Hanukkah, which is the eight nights of joy, it’s been eight decades for you of strength and resilience, and getting on your feet and becoming something in the world and being able to prosper and find joy once again. So, at this difficult time in the Jews’ history, I wish you all peace and love and serenity and happy Hanukkah.”