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Loren Galler-Rabinowitz: Olympic-Trained Skater Pursues Social Justice
August 22, 2008Comments (2) | Add | E-mail this to a friend
After a decade of Olympic-training, 22-year old Bronze Medalist Loren Galler-Rabinowitz has put her athletic dreams on hold to pursue a degree from Harvard University. A third-generation Holocaust survivor and active Hillel student, Loren is committed to the Jewish value of tikkun olam (repairing the world) one celebrity appearance at a time.
From her parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts, Loren Galler-Rabinowitz watches the 2008 Olympics like millions of other fans around the world. But she sees the games through different eyes.
 Loren with former partner David Mitchell in Lake Placid.
Instead she looks to fellow Jewish athletes like Mark Spitz and Dara Torres with admiration.
“I’m 22 and I feel the effects of the rigorous training,” Loren balks. “What [Torres] has been able to accomplish [at 41 years old] is superhuman…so physically impressive. We only get to see 30 seconds at the end of a very long journey.”
Rewind to 1988 when, at age 2, Loren started ice skating alongside her mother (who dabbled in the sport) for fun. What started as a bonding experience soon became a childhood career. In 1995, Loren was scouted by Olympic Coach Natalia Dubova while competing solo in Lake Placid. Dubova, a Soviet Jew married to an Olympic swimming champion, paired her with ice dancer David Mitchell.
At the time, Mitchell was living in upstate New York, but relocated to Boston to team up with Loren. They trained together for nearly a decade, competing across the United States and the globe. Loren’s family accompanied her to every city.
“We made a point of finding the Jewish communities in every place we traveled,” recalls Loren. “Even in Beijing, China. After each competition, we'd take three days to find our roots."
At age 15, Loren was a national junior champion and by 17, she and her partner were Bronze Medalists at the 2004 United States Figure Skating Championships. The pair was gearing up for the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy but never proceeded. Loren explains that “we had an injury” even though it was Mitchell who was hurt.
Unable to compete as a team, the pair split. Mitchell went to Law School and Loren made aliyah in Israel. She has since returned to the Boston area where she is studying English literature at Harvard, attends Hillel programs and has developed an interest in modern Israeli literature and Yiddish poetry.
 Loren in Barbados.
When the Nazis invaded in 1943, 21-year old Eva Vogel, her father and three siblings were forced onto a train bound for Belzec Death Camp. Eva, her 15-year old brother and 16-year old sister jumped off the train at their father’s urging. Eva was the only one to survive the daring escape, shielded from gunfire by a snow bank. She assumed a Catholic identity, changed her name to “Katrina” (a name that would bring tragic irony years later) and worked on a German farm until the war ended in 1945.
Fatefully, a year later, she was reunited with her childhood sweetheart, Henry Galler, who had survived years of forced labor in Siberia. Eva and Henry were two of only 20 Oleszynce Jews to survive the Holocaust.
Married in December of 1946, the Gallers moved to Sweden, had a daughter, Janina, and then relocated to the United States. They settled in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1962. In 1985, 63-year old Eva received her bachelor’s degree (an ambition interrupted by WWII) from the University of New Orleans. Together, Eva and Henry Galler committed their lives to anti-hate education, touring the Southern United States to speak out against genocide, racism and violence. It’s estimated that the Gallers touched the lives of 300,000 school children with their story of Holocaust survival.
Janina Galler, a psychiatrist and neurologist, married Burton Rabinowitz, a cardiologist, and had three daughters of her own. Enter Loren Galler-Rabinowitz.
Raised in Barbados, where her mother was researching malnourished children, Loren and her twin sisters grew up with an inherited sense of responsibility to do social justice.
"I’ve always had an awareness of people who are less privileged than me because I grew up around it," says Loren. "Being the grandchild of survivors, there’s a responsibility to aid people who haven’t had the same advantages."
To that end, Loren and her family have leveraged her athletic ability as an accomplished ice dancer to support fundraisers that benefit children with cancer and other special needs. It’s easy, Loren says, to adopt a one-track focus when you are an athlete without teammates. For her, charity is an opportunity to think of others and do for others rather than focusing on a personal goal. Loren’s work with sick children sparked an interest in health and global medicine which is why she is pursuing her undergraduate degree before applying to medical school.
With her training days behind her, Loren recalls her skating career - which is currently on hold - with fond memories and no regret.
"The way I came into the sport was almost by chance and I love[d] it," she says. "It was such an amazing journey, being able to travel all over the world at such a young age...I got to do something I desperately loved doing and that was such a gift in itself.”
 Loren with grandparents Henry and Eva Galler, twins sisters Danielle (left) and Arielle and cousin Jake Singer.
Still spry at 87, Henry Galler continues to educate the public about the atrocities of the Holocaust. He speaks 14 languages (mostly Slavic) and has just recently picked up Spanish now that he lives in Texas. Loren is filled with pride when she describes him.
Heeding her grandmother’s advice about not making long-term plans because “the ice is slippery…you never know what’s going to happen,” Loren doesn’t put pressure on herself to compete professionally in the future or segue into an amazing career. But she is considering a possible future in Israel where she hopes to one day open a pediatric clinic.
“They just opened a new ice rink in Tel Aviv,” she adds. “So there may be a way to combine both things.”
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