Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

The University Medallion is a symbol of USCs lasting commitment to use these visual and oral histories to educate, enlighten and shape a future without hate, Folt said.

The granting of the University Medallion comes at a time when antisemitism is on the rise globally in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza.

I am increasingly alarmed that we may be condemned to repeat history to once again have to fight for the very right to be Jewish, Spielberg said. In the face of brutality and persecution, we have always been a resilient and compassionate people who understand the power of empathy to combat fear.

We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of Oct. 7 and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza, Spielberg added. This makes us a unique force for good in the world and is why we are here today to celebrate the work of the Shoah Foundation, which is more crucial now than it was in 1994.

Spielberg, who is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust, spoke about his own experiences as a target of antisemitism, recounting how he was physically and verbally harassed as one of the only Jewish students in his high school in California. He shared that he was inspired to create the foundation when filming Schindlers List in Krakow, Poland, after a group of Holocaust survivors visited the set. To date, the institute has recorded more than 56,000 survivor testimonies from 65 countries and in 44 languages.

Spielberg entrusted USC with the stewardship of the foundation and its audiovisual archive in 2006. Since then, USC has invested $50 million in the foundation, providing the necessary infrastructure to ensure the permanence of the collection and its use for education and research purposes.

It is USCs mission to preserve and protect these eyewitness accounts in perpetuity, Folt said. Awarding the University Medallion is one way that we do it. It will forever be a public display of our commitment to ensuring the testimonies from the survivors will be preserved for generations to come. And it honors individuals whose testimonies are preserved in the Shoah Foundation for bringing light in times of darkness.

While countering antisemitism lies at the core of USC Shoah Foundations mission, Spielberg emphasized that the foundation endeavors to inoculate the world from hatred in all its forms. The foundations visual history archive contains testimonies from survivors of other mass-atrocity crimes and genocides, including the Armenian genocide, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the killing and expulsion of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.

USC Shoah Foundations visual history archive serves as an educational tool for middle and high school students and those enrolled at USC. Last summer, the foundation sponsored the first Stronger Than Hate Leadership Summit, which sent a group of USC student-athletes to Europe to tour the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and experience Jewish culture in Poland.

One of the survivors who participated in the summit was Shaul Ladany, who joined Mondays medallion ceremony at USC virtually via Zoom from his home in Israel. The 88-year-old Olympic athlete and world-record holding speed-walker, who gave his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 2023, is a survivor of both the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Ladany spoke to those at the medallion ceremony about how he was able to survive the Holocaust, emigrate to Israel and become a professional athlete and academic. Afterward, USC fourth-year track and field athlete Rae-Anne Serville, who first met Ladany as part of the Stronger Than Hate summit group, had a poignant question for him.

How did you find the strength to go through all [your] experiences while still having such a positive outlook? Serville asked.

I was born as an optimist, Ladany replied.

Serville also spoke about the profound impact the trip had on her. Seeing the gas chambers where Jews perished and adjacent towns where Jews suffering was ignored drove home the role that bystanders can play in genocide.

The main takeaway for me is that indifference is just as dangerous as being a perpetrator of hate, Serville said. Being indifferent allows hate to continue.

Sponsoring educational trips such as the leadership summit is one way USC Shoah Foundation is evolving.

Robert Williams, the Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, noted that while the foundation is rooted in the model of survivor documentation established by Spielberg 30 years ago, the day when no living Holocaust survivors remain is drawing close.

Today, we live in a world where there are less than 245,000 Holocaust survivors still with us to share their stories, Williams said. And at an average age of 86, Im sorry to say, the sun is soon setting.

The foundation is now working to build a collection on antisemitic violence after 1945 that will be used for scholarly pursuits and investigative journalism. It recently launched an initiative to add 10,000 testimonies to its Contemporary Antisemitism collection and has plans for a Countering Antisemitism Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research center. In partnership with schools across USC, the foundation will leverage pioneering technology to tackle online antisemitism.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

The author Georgia Hunter grew up hearing that her granduncle kept a fake penis foreskin on hand in case he had to show proof that he wasnt Jewish in Warsaw during the Holocaust.

As the story was told to Hunter, her relative, an architect named Adam, was so desperate not to be discovered as Jewish that he stuck a bandage on his member with an egg white and water mixture. When a landlords wife confronted him, accusing him of hiding his real identity, he dropped his pants in front of her. The getup fooled her. The woman apologized profusely and hurried out of the apartment.

That moment, depicted in Hunters 2017 novel We Were the Lucky Ones, appears in an episode of the TV adaptation of the same name, out Mar. 28 on Hulu. Adam (played by Sam Woolf) and Hunters grandaunt Halina (Joey King) collapse in giggles afterwards at the great lengths he went to hide his Jewish identity. But it was just one of many life or death situations that Adam and his family faced trying to stay alive during the Holocaust.

The novel and Hulu show are inspired by the Kurc family, Hunters real great-grandparents and their five children who got separated when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. The eight-episode series is all about their efforts to come back together, and how they manage to survive and reunite after the war. Showrunners got to work off of a decade of research that Hunter, a co-executive producer, did for the novel, like oral histories available via USCs Shoah Foundation. And several scenes in the movie are recreated from family photographs that Hunter tracked down over the years across the globe.

Hunter first learned that her grandfather Addy (Logan Lerman), a composer and engineer who lived in France when the war first broke out, came from a long line of Holocaust survivors while doing a family history assignment in high school. She then assumed the role of the familys historian, trying to learn as much about this dark chapter in her relatives lives. Sheet music for her grandfathers first big hit The List still exists, and Lerman plays an excerpt in the Hulu show (plus theres a 1930s recording of it on SoundCloud.)

Through her research, Hunter learned that her granduncle Geneck had a baby with his wife in a gulag in Siberia. Hunter found handwritten descriptions of his time in Siberia at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Adam, who kept the fake foreskin, made fake IDs for members of the underground resistance movement. His wife Halina, tried to protect her parents by getting them jobs at a gunpowder factory and then found them a family they could hide with during the duration of the war.

Hunters grandaunt Mila, her grandfathers sister, had to manage hiding her Jewish identity in Warsaw and hiding her toddler named Felicia. She put her in a convent, dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to Barbara. During the day, she worked a series of brutal jobs, and as one devastating scene in episode six shows, a housewife that Mila is working for throws a vase at her heada story Hunter says got passed down in her family. Mila donated some of the wartime dresses that Felicia wore to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust history museum in Israel, and a replica of a dress Felicia wore with the fake name Barbara stitched on it appears in the show.

On Mar. 26, Hunter and her family members gathered in Washington, D.C. to donate the family archive to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum so it can inform future scholarship. Among the notable artifacts are family photos, the fake IDs and papers that Adam and Halina used to pretend they were married, and Hunters grandfather Addys snakeskin wallet, where he kept declined visas, military papers, health recordsvarious documents he used to try and get out of France and immigrate somewhere safer.

Hunter hopes learning about the Holocaust through the story of one ordinary familys extraordinary journey will make a vast, complicated history more relatable. The series, she says, allows us just that. The episodes shed light on what's happening across borders today, she says, adding that she hopes viewers will come away with more empathy for refugees.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

BERLIN Those seeking German citizenship could soon have to answer test questions about antisemitism, Germanys commitment to Israel and Jewish life in Germany.

The catalogue of more than 300 questions from which citizenship test questions can be selected is to be amended shortly, the interior ministry said in a statement, pending final approval. New questions, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, are to include: What is a Jewish house of prayer called? When was the State of Israel founded? What is the reason for Germanys special responsibility for Israel? How is Holocaust denial punished in Germany? And, somewhat mysteriously: Who can become a member of the approximately 40 Jewish Maccabi sports clubs in Germany? (Anyone, according to the organizations FAQ.)

The move comes months after the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt made a written commitment for the right of the State of Israel to exist a requirement for naturalization.

Germany has cracked down on pro-Palestinian voices and on antisemitism amid Israels war in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Germany and German institutions have come under criticism in recent months for enforcing strict speech policies affecting pro-Palestinian protests. Museum shows, book talks and other art events have been canceled.

One thing is particularly important to me, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Der Spiegel. As a result of the German crime against humanity of the Holocaust comes our special responsibility for the protection of Jews and for the protection of the State of Israel. This responsibility is part of our identity today.

Anyone who doesnt share our values cant get a German passport. We have drawn a crystal clear red line here, Faeser said. Antisemitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humanity rule out naturalization.

The 33-question citizenship test is one of several prerequisites to becoming a German citizen. To pass, applicants must correctly answer at least 17 multiple-choice questions within an hour.

A wave of more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents logged by authorities since Oct. 7 has prompted German leaders to call for better enforcement of the countrys antisemitism laws in recent months.

Antisemitism has no place in Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an address to German parliament in late October. We will do everything to oppose it. We will do this as citizens, and as bearers of political responsibility.

This includes enforcing existing laws, Scholz said.

While antisemitism itself is not a crime in Germany, antisemitic motivation for a crime can be considered in sentencing. In April 2023, the government announced that it would increase annual payments to the Central Council of Jews in Germany to almost $24 million, in part to further strengthen the safety and security of Jewish communities.

Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany, and punishable by prison time.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Among the many misperceptions about the Holocaust that well-meaning Hollywood creators have unwittingly perpetuated, the most damaging has been the idea that Jews were passive victims, complacently herded into airless train cars to be exterminated at death camps. Bloody revenge fantasies like Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds aside, realistic accounts of Jewish self-defense in the face of Nazi annihilation have been few and far between. We Were the Lucky Ones, Hulus eight-part adaptation of the novel by Georgia Hunter, provides a rare counter-narrative of courageous resistance. Yet it still falls prey to many of the tear-jerking, experience-flattening conventions that rob so much Holocaust fiction of specificity and insight.

Premiering March 28, Lucky Ones spans nearly a decade in the lives of the Kurcs, a big, affectionate, upper-middle-class Jewish family based in Radom, Poland. We meet them in 1938, on the day Addy (Logan Lerman), a composer of some renown in Paris, arrives at his parents (Robin Weigert and Lior Ashkenazi) apartment for Passover. His sister Mila (Hadas Yaron) is expecting her first child with her husband, Selim (Michael Aloni). Their brother Jakob (Amit Rahav) seems more passionate about his girlfriend, Bella (Eva Feiler), than he is about his studies in law school. Eldest child Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) is their fathers protg and confidant.

With apologies to Addy, the familys real hero is youngest daughter Halina, a clever, willful, vivacious young woman played by The Act and The Kissing Booth star Joey King. Shes got her eye on the architect lodger her parents have taken in, Adam (Sam Woolf), perhaps in the hope of forging a love connection. More urgent, in her mind, is her search for a direction in life. After nervous whispers about a spike in local antisemitism presage Germanys sudden invasion of Poland, Halina finds that purpose in working for the anti-Nazi resistanceand, more so, in scrambling to keep her parents and siblings safe. As the years go on and the persecution Jews face intensifies, she will lie, bribe, fight, scheme, embark upon long, perilous journeys, and endure all manner of torture in a tireless quest to ensure that the Kurcs survive the Holocaust.

Although its based on a true story, Lucky Ones verges on unbelievability in its depiction of the sheer variety of World War II-era horrors the Kurcs survive, across four continents. Some depart for Soviet-controlled Lvov, to take their chances with Stalin; a storyline set at a grueling Siberian work camp follows. Those who stay in Radom see their homes seized, their jobs eliminated, their businesses stolen. After the Nazis invade France, Addy winds up on a boat headed for Brazilbut there will be many unanticipated stops on his voyage to freedom. Meanwhile, there are pogroms, ghettos, firing squads, Jews posing as virulently antisemitic gentiles, nuns paid to hide a young child at an orphanage, brief glimpses inside concentration camps and at Senegal under Vichy rule.

The breadth of experiences the series depicts, and its concentration on Jews who did not go quietly from their living rooms to the gas chambers, could make it a useful teaching tool. Which is not to say its dry; I was in tears for much of the finale, thanks to performances that are universally convincing and in some cases, like Kings and Lermans, excellent. (I do wish Weigert, whos been brilliant in shows like Deadwood and Jessica Jones, had been given more to do.) And while it can be confusing to watch characters speak Polish-accented English in Radom and French-accented English in Paris for the sake of subtitle-wary American audiences, I appreciate showrunner Erica Lipezs (The Morning Show) choice not to over-explain Jewish culture.

Despite its many virtues, Lucky Ones falls into the same traps as too many other Holocaust dramas. The script can be quite lazy, filled with whole sentences weve heard before: All of Europe has gone mad. Why wont you let me love you? The Germans are coming! There are so many Kurcs, each with their own significant other, that everyone besides Halina and Addy can seem interchangeable. This is, in part, due to the noble yet nonspecific personality with which each is endowed by virtue of being a Jewish character in a show about the Holocaust. And when a Kurc survives where we watch other, anonymous Jews perish, the likely inadvertent but nonetheless offensive implication is that theyre superior to the millions across Europe who werent so luckysmarter, tougher, more empowered by their love for one another.

Anyone with a functioning heart will find this familys story moving. Viewers whose education on the Holocaust has come solely from Hollywood might even find it enlightening. What it lacks, as a work of art (it would be grotesque to call it a work of entertainment), is the level of insight that might justify putting us through eight hours worth of human misery. What does it mean that not just the Nazis, but essentially the entire world, made it impossible for Jews to find safety during World War II? How does the Kurcs saga speak to the worlds current refugee crises? How does it mirror the family separations that happen at the United States own southern border? With so many Holocaust dramas, on screens big and small, vying to yank our heart strings, the bar for a truly crucial example is high. We Were the Lucky Ones comes close but doesnt clear it.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

For her efforts to educate young people about the Holocaust, a Moorpark High School student won a prestigious award from the nonprofit David Labkovski Project.

Based in West Hills, DLP seeks to combat antisemitism by teaching students about the Holocaust through art. The project is based on the life and works of artist David Labkovski (1906-1991), engaging viewers with his paintings and sketches to share lessons of life, survival, tolerance, acceptance and the importance of bearing witness to history.

More than 5,000 students have been reached through its programs.

During its eighth annual Scholars Event on March 17 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, DLP organizers named MHS junior Katia Lysobey as one of two recipients of the Ellie Lainer Youth Leadership Award in Holocaust Education. Both Katia and de Toledo High Schools Sophie Small have been involved in bringing the DLP program to their peers and community.

The award is named for Encino resident and DLP founding supporter Ellie Lainer.

Leora Raikin, Labkovskis great niece and DLP founder, said Katia, upon completing the DLP student docent and leadership training program, took it upon herself to bring the program and exhibit to Temple Etz Chaim (in Thousand Oaks), and thereafter lectured to her religious school student program confirmation class.

Katia is now an ambassador for the David Labkovski Project and mentors new students in the program.

Katia, since becoming a youth ambassador for DLP, has been a docent at the USC campus and the Skirball as part of the exhibit Documenting History Through Art, Raikin said.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

A California lawmaker, along with the states lieutenant governor, announced legislation on Thursday to help California residents reclaim personal property stolen from them during the Holocaust.

The law comes after a controversial case that was affirmed in a California court last month, in which Claude Cassirer, a California resident, discovered that a painting was on display in Spain that Nazis had stolen from a relative of his in 1939.

Under California state law, Cassirer, the sole heir to the paintings original owner, had legitimate ownership of the artwork. The state has never formally recognized adverse possession of personal property that is to say, there is no mechanism in California law by which something obtained via theft nevertheless becomes legitimate property of the person whose hands it fell into.

In the words of the California court: A thief cannot pass title to anyone, including a good faith purchaser.

Under Spanish law, however, the painting no longer belonged to Cassiers family because the Spanish government purchased it without knowledge of its stolen origin and possessed it for more than three years before Cassirer filed his claim.

Though the judges who decided the case expressed regret at the outcome - one judge wrote that she agreed with the result, but it was at odds with her moral compass - the court decided it was appropriate in this case to recognize Spanish law, on the principle that foreign states generally have jurisdiction over what happens inside their own borders.

The legislation introduced on Thursday would apply to cases such as this one, demanding that California courts apply local law rather than foreign law when a case involves ownership of property that was stolen during a genocide or other acts of persecution.

This bill will ensure that Holocaust survivors and other victims of persecution can secure justice, said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who introduced the bill. Our effort will make it crystal clear, he added, that cases must be decided based on truth, justice, and morality, not the misapplication of legal technicalities.

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New California bill would help Holocaust survivors recover stolen art - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

(March 28, 2024 / JNS)

Addressing video footage on social media purporting to show Palestinians being killed by Israeli bombs, Joe Rogan told the millions who listen to his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday that Israel was committing genocide.

If you cant talk about that, if you cant say thats real, then youre saying that genocide is okay as long as were doing it, he said.

Then he brought the Holocaust into the discussion.

Youre saying that from the perspective of someone who literally went through the Holocaust or your people, your tribe. You went through the Holocaust and now youre willing to do it? he said, apparently directing his statement at Israel.

Democratic Majority for Israel called the prominent podcasters statement wholly false and dangerous.

Joe Rogan accuses Israel of genocide. Compares the war in Gaza to the Holocaust. Hes just plain wrong, and he really ought to have someone on his podcast who disagrees with him for some enlightening, informative conversation, wrote Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois. Instead of just tossing that ugly charge out there.

Rogans podcast was ranked as Spotifys most popular of 2023. He has 16.4 million subscribers on YouTube.

In February 2023, Rogan was criticized for saying, The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. Thats like saying Italians arent into pizza.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

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SACRAMENTO, CA Today, Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) unveiled legislation that would help California residents recover art and other personal property stolen during the Holocaust or other acts of genocide or persecution.

Assembly Bill (AB) 2867 was introduced following a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that has allowed a Spanish museum to retain possession of a famous Impressionist masterpiece stolen by the Nazis. In that case, the Ninth Circuits decision to apply Spanish law rather than California law resulted in a deep injustice, with The Los Angeles Times editorial board noting that it is outrageous and shameful for the Spanish museum to keep a painting that [t]he whole world knows . . . was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish family during the Holocaust. AB 2867 would address this injustice by mandating that California law must apply in lawsuits involving the theft of art or other personal property looted during the Holocaust or other acts of persecution.

This bill will ensure that Holocaust survivors and other victims of persecution can secure justice through our legal system and recover property that rightfully belongs to them and their families, said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D Encino), who Co-Chairs the Legislative Jewish Caucus and previously represented Holocaust survivors as an attorney in private practice. Our effort will make it crystal clear that California law must triumph over foreign law, that California stands with Holocaust survivors, and that cases must be decided based on truth, justice, and morality, not the misapplication of legal technicalities.

AB 2867 builds on prior California law which has always aimed to assist California residents in recovering stolen property, including property stolen during the Holocaust. Attorney General Rob Bonta and former Attorney General Kamala Harris both argued that California law should apply to cases like that involving the Cassirer family, who were forced to surrender a famous impressionist masterpiece by Camille Pissarro to the Nazis at the beginning of World War II. Despite such arguments, the Ninth Circuit recently found that Spanish law should apply in this case, effectively allowing a Spanish museum to retain ownership of the stolen painting.

My time spent in Budapest as US Ambassador, where nearly half a million Jews were mercilessly killed and their property stolen, was a lesson in Holocaust history, said California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis. The decades-long effort to return confiscated property to Jewish families is morally courageous. I am proud to sponsor Assemblymember Gabriels bill as an effort to empower California families to retrieve stolen and looted property that is rightfully theirs.

My father, Claude Cassirer, never stopped thinking or talking about what happened to his illustrious Cassirer family and, on a larger scale, the Jews of Europe, said David Cassirer, the only surviving member of the Cassirer family. As a Holocaust survivor, the proudest day of my fathers life was in 1947, when he first became a U.S. citizen. He would have been terribly disappointed in the recent ruling by the American courts, allowing Spain, through its national museum, to keep the Pissarro painting stolen by the Nazis from his beloved grandmother, Lilly. But he would be so happy, and grateful, that the California legislature is taking the necessary steps to apply Californias laws ensuring the return of looted art to its rightful owners.

This legislation is imperative to effectuate Californias and the Federal Governments long-standing laws and deeply held policies protecting the true owners of stolen art, and especially Nazi-looted art, said Samuel Dubbin, Co-Counsel for the Cassirer family and a long-time advocate for Holocaust survivors. The Nazis perpetrated murder and theft on an incomprehensible scale. Yet, as Secretary of State Blinken noted recently, restitution of stolen art is essential to counter Holocaust distortion and denial, as a clear affirmation of what occurred and a small step toward giving something back to families and communities who lost everything much of which can never be replaced.

AB 2867 now heads to the Assembly Judiciary Committee, where it is expected to be heard in the coming weeks

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Christian Womens Noon Connection will have a noon luncheon on Monday, April 8, at the Midland University Dining Hall, Ninth and Pebble streets, in Fremont.

The theme of the guest luncheon is Rescued in Faith.

A portrayal of Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Holocaust survivor, will be presented by Gayle Haas of Aurora, Illinois. Haas also will share her own story. She is a homemaker, teacher, dramatist and storyteller. She is a graduate of Western Illinois University. She taught in both private and public schools. She has two daughters and sons-in-law, and two grandsons.

Music will be provided by the Midland University Clef Dwellers.

Cost of the luncheon is $15. To make a reservation, call Pat at 402-720-3847 by April 2. Honoring your reservation is necessary.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

(March 27, 2024 / JNS)

KADIMA-ZORAN, IsraelWalking cane in hand, the small elderly man hovers over the two fresh graves, gingerly watering the potted plants adorning them. He straightens the pictures of the young men, arranges the stones and mementos, and cleans off the tombstones.

I know what pain is, Yaakov Lubinewski, 99, whose entire family was murdered by the Nazis eight decades ago, told a freshly bereaved Israeli father nearly six months ago in the aftermath of Hamass Oct. 7 massacre. The pain will not pass, and it will be hard to recover, but remember there is something to live for.

Something to live for

It was, after all, his own lifes lessonclimbing out of the ashes of despair to build a new lifethat he was sharing as he neared his centennial year.

When I heard about the soldiers who had fallen I couldnt contain myself and burst into tears, Lubinewski told JNS during an interview on Tuesday in the village cemetery just east of Netanya where his wife, who passed away two years ago, is also buried. They were just starting their lives. It touched my heart how these parents would live on.

Lubinewski pledged to the bereaved father, whom he met the day after his sons funeral, that he would take care of the gravesite for as long as he lived.

Lubinewski, accompanied by his faithful caretaker, Anya, has made the half-hour trek to the cemetery on his scooter every day since, walking stick in one hand and watering can in the other.He first stops at the grave of his wife, Mazal, which is bedecked with a rainbow of colorful plants, and after recounting to her the latest goings-on makes the short walk over to the military section of the cemetery and the final resting place of the two soldiers from his town who were killed during Hamass invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7. If he misses going one morning, Lubinewski comes in the evening. He never skips a day, his caretaker said.

This is Russo, and this is Shay, he said, gesturing to the gravesites of IDF Staff Sergeants Ofek Russo and YaronOreeShay, both of whom were 21 years old when they were killed. I feel that they are like my own children, he added.I will be with them until I die.

This is my task now, he said. I feel it is a great privilege.

Izhar Shay, Yarons father and a former Israeli government minister, told JNS that Yaakov entered our lives at the most difficult and painful moment. From the shrapnel of our crushed happiness, hewho climbed out of his own devastating personal family tragedy and built a new lifemade it clear to us that there is something to live for.

Surviving the Nazis

Livingand survivingwas something that as a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Poland Lubinewski was determined to do. Born in 1925 to a traditional Jewish family in a village some 40 miles from Warsaw, he remembers keeping the Jewish holidays and the Sabbath together with his three siblings.When the Germans invaded Poland, his family fled to another town where there were more Jews, including some relatives, but they were soon ordered to relocate to the Warsaw Ghetto. (Eight decades later, he still remembers how they were forced to sell his beloved tailor-made bar mitzvah suit ahead of the journey.)

I dont know how we managed to live, he said. There was no food; illnesses were rampant. His uncle died of starvation before his eyes.

Desperate, his family managed to get out of the ghetto before it was entirely sealed off and made their way via a river to a city about 60 miles from Warsaw.

In the spring of 1941, a German sergeant saved Lubinewski and a childhood friend from the clutches of the Nazis by offering them a job as agricultural workers on his estate. He passed the lads off as Poles in Germany after changing their names. The sergeant, Nickel Otto, was among the first non-Jews to be recognized by Jerusalems Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Lubinewski, who would often cry out the words of the Jewish prayer Shema Yisrael at the German farm, felt pangs of conscience and regret at having left his whole family behind in Poland without a parting word, feelings he would carry with him for the rest of his life. His family had been rounded up by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, where they all perished. He alone, of his whole extended family, would survive the Holocaust, working on the German farm with his fake identity.

Starting over

After the war, Lubinewski became a forest ranger in Poland and often felt that he was the only Jew left in the world.Then one day, he met the childhood friend with whom he had escaped to Germany, who told him of his plans to sail to the Land of Israel with a youth group.

I was a forest inspector in Poland, but I knew I was Jewish and that I needed to be among the Jews, said Lubinewski. I told him, Im coming with you to the Land of Israel.

Arriving in the midst of the 1948-49 War of Independence, Lubinewski was immediately drafted into the ragtag Israeli army.

There was food; there was bread, margarine and jelly, he said. I was happy.

Out of the darkness

He would subsequently meet his late wife Mazal, with whom he had five children. He now has nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. It was my wife who brought me out of the dark well of despair to the light and brought me back to life, he said, tears welling in his eyes.

After getting a job with the Israeli Agriculture Ministry in the 1950s by highlighting his experience as a forest ranger, he would later become a beekeeper. He built with his own hands the large village home he still lives in with some of his family members, in addition to a cat and dog.

Lubinewski, his astute mind belying his advanced age, clearly recalls the day that he embraced his Jewish brothers and sisters in the group that gathered in the Polish forest before making their way to the new State of Israel.

What has happened to [the unity of] the Jewish people? he asked.

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