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Oct. 28, 2011
A quiet reunion of the righteous
Holocaust-era heroes who made their homes in Israel meet to share their experiences.
ARIEH O’SULLIVAN THE MEDIA LINE
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.
While Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial has recognized and honored thousands of these bright lights who risked their lives during the darkness of the Second World War, it is a little known fact that some 130 of these non-Jewish rescuers chose to move to Israel since that time. Today, just 21 are left and the most able among them, surrounded by family and volunteers, recently enjoyed the warm October sun in Ramat Yishai, the wicked memories of the war long buried.
“Eighteen members of my family, my father, my aunt and another uncle, they saved thousands of people,” said Esther Grinberg, 77, who was herself recognized as a Righteous Gentile for helping her family save Jews in her native Holland. “I never told the stories. I don’t know why. I thought perhaps no one wanted to know or wouldn’t like to hear about it.”
Israel has given honorary citizenship and a small stipend to these heroes, but it’s sometimes not enough and that is where the organization ATZUM steps in. Set up about a decade ago to encourage social activism, they took under their wing the Righteous Gentiles who made a life in Israel, pitching in where the state’s welfare ended. This is the third reunion of Righteous Gentiles organized by ATZUM.
“These people did so much for us, for the Jewish people, for humanity. They risked their lives to save other people in the darkest period in humanity and there is not enough that we can do for them. What we do is a drop in the sea, but it’s important to recognize the good that they did and give back to them,” said Yael Rosen, project coordinator for ATZUM.
The Righteous Gentiles who moved to Israel over the course of its 63 years came for a variety of reasons. Some had fallen in love with the Jews they had saved or were persecuted for their actions after the war or, in later decades, believed the conditions in the modern state of Israel were better than those in Europe.
Melenik was a young teenager in Ukraine during the Second World War. He and his family risked their lives smuggling food to Jews and hid 50 of them.
“At the end of the war, I married Faina. She was a Jew and we fell in love at first sight. All of her family was murdered. We moved to Israel in 1994 and I discovered that I was recognized as a Righteous Gentile,” he explained. “When I got here, I felt like I immediately belonged and I forgot that I was ever in the Ukraine. Israel is my home and in my heart.
“Does Israel owe me anything? Certainly not. If anything, I owe Israel. Israel is surrounded by many enemies,” he added.
Some of the Righteous Gentiles became Israeli for good and for bad. Tzippi Shurani said that her mother, grandmother and two aunts were all declared Righteous Gentiles for saving lives in Czechoslovakia. “In the first Lebanon War, a [Hezbollah] rocket hit our house in Nahariya but that wasn’t so bad. But the first rocket fired in the Second Lebanon War hit us again and did devastating damage,” she said. “But my mother said she had planted roots here and this is where she wanted to live.”
Aged 93, Mina Tzurovsky was too weak to make the reunion, but her daughter, Zina, told how they decided to move to Israel 11 years ago because they had relatives here. Her father, who was Jewish, had been in the Red Army, and her mother had saved many children by hiding them.
Grinberg said she was first motivated to move to Israel in the late 1940s, when she saw photographs of Jewish immigrants arriving on ships. After training as a nurse, she moved here on her own in the 1950s. She said her ancestors were Huguenots, devout Protestants who fled France and were driven by an inner sense of helping others.
“I just think there are a lot of people walking around here in Israel who were saved by my family that I don’t know. You never know it. Nothing was spoken about it. After the war nobody spoke. My father didn’t return and my uncle didn’t return and another uncle was betrayed.”
She eventually married an Israeli, converted to Judaism and, after she retired, she continued her family tradition of helping others by setting up the site of the Righteous Gentiles reunion this week, Nagish Café, which is entirely run by people with disabilities. Grinberg said she doesn’t feel much in common with the others in the group, since they were from eastern Europe and she had no common language with them, but attends nonetheless.
Still, ATZUM’s goal is to keep the remaining Righteous Gentiles in touch and help others recognize their contribution. “ATZUM supplements their state stipend to help cover medical costs and caretaker costs, and to [facilitate] ... services and maintain a personal connection,” Rosen explained. “They know that someone in Israel visits them and cares about them. We go on home visits. They have adoptive grandchildren that come and visit them. Someone sends flowers for their birthday and cards to them. That means so much for people, especially for people in the last years of their lives and on their own and with their families abroad.”
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