Jerusalem Post
October 6, 2011
By Arieh O’Sullivan/The Media Line
Holocaust-era heroes who risked their lives to save Jews left Europe to make homes in Israel, but their numbers are dwindling.
RAMAT YISHAI – Viktor Melenik, an 82-year-old bon vivant with a couple of medals pinned to his lapels, bellows out: “Forget the soup, let’s have wine.”
A half a dozen folks in their 70s and 80s chuckle along in this unusual gathering of unassuming heroes of sorts at a café in northern Israel. Known as “Righteous Gentiles,” they helped saved Jews from persecution and extermination during the Nazi Holocaust. [Read more…]
A group of “rescuers” living in Israel — known to the rest of the world as “righteous gentiles” — will also gather to celebrate the Jewish New Year, albeit after the holiday, on October 4. The ‘ATZUM’ organization has organized the gathering, an annual event, to enable the rescuers, many of whom are now elderly, to socialize with each other and with their “adoptive Israeli grandchildren” says ATZUM founding executive director, Rabbi Levi Lauer.
Yael Rosen of Atzum (
ances are you might have done a double-take as you passed by a certain shopping center storefront. Instead of using mannequins to sell clothing items, there were live models on display–perhaps a more natural way to show off the attire. But then, if you looked closer, the price tags weren’t clipped to their clothes: They were attached to the women’s wrists.
On the patio of Nagish Café, a blind man is drinking coffee with a friend who has arrived in an electric wheelchair. Inside, I’m having lunch with the Righteous Among the Nations, a group of women who all risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. We’re in Ramat Yishai, a small town in the Jezreel Valley, emerald green this winter from abundant rain.
Tamara Maximenok-Bromberg and her mother Evangelina Maximeniuk, 1940.
