I recently arrived back from a trip to Israel. This trip was focused on forming a stronger relationahip with the people, land, and state of Israel.
On this trip, we were able to visit the Ghetto Fighters House. This museum is located in Israel and was the first Holocaust museum ever built and was built by survivors themselves. The museum is located on a kibbutz on the Galilee called Lohamei Hagetaot. It was a beautiful museum but there was one exhibit that stood out to me. In the exhibit, there were dark cases with artifacts in them. When you selected that case, the artifacts were brightened and the story of the person who owned that possention was displayed. I wanted to share an artifact and story from this exhibit that stood out to me for this month’s text message.
Israel Wasserman was born in 1912 in Darmanesti, Romania.
In October 1941 he was sent with his father Aharon-Arie and his mother Tauba to the Murafa ghetto in Mogilev Podolski, Transnistra. They remained in the ghetto until October 1944.
Aharon-Arie died in the ghetto and was buried in a Jewish orthodox service.
After the region was liberated by the Red Army, they walked back to Romania. Along the way, Israel remembered he had forgotten his tefillin in the ghetto. He returned despite his family’s attempts to dissuade him. He found the teffilin but was arrested by the Soviet Authorities and was sent to forced labor. There he met his wife, Luisa Filstein, a Red Army Nurse. They married and traveled to Suceava, Bukovina.
In 1959 they had a son, Avi.
They lived in Suceava until 1961 and later immigrated to Israel.