Holocaust survivor and Israel’s oldest resident, Yehuda Widawski, passes away at 107
The oldest Holocaust survivor in Israel, Yehuda Aharon Widawski, has died at the age of 107. Widawski survived the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz and later devoted decades of his life to preserving and restoring Jewish heritage in Poland.
Surviving the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz
Yehuda Aharon Widawski was born in 1919 in the Polish town of Turek. In the 1930s, his family moved to Lodz, where they ran a textile business. After the Nazi occupation of Poland, the family was forced into the Lodz Ghetto, where they remained until its liquidation in August 1944.
The Nazis then deported the ghetto’s remaining prisoners to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Yehuda’s parents, Abram and Leah, and his older brother Gabriel were murdered shortly after arriving at the death camp.
Two of Yehuda’s other siblings later died in the Buchenwald and Stutthof concentration camps. Yehuda and his younger brother Yehoshua survived the selection process at Auschwitz and were transferred to the Friedland forced-labor camp, where they were forced to assemble wings for German aircraft. The brothers remained there until their liberation by the Red Army in 1945.
Life in Israel and Preserving Jewish Heritage
After the war, Widawski returned to Lodz, reopened his textile business and started a family. He also secretly helped an underground organization acquire weapons for the emerging Jewish state. In 1950, Widawski moved to Israel with his family, where he built a successful business and raised his children.
Preserving Jewish memory and heritage later became a major part of Widawski’s life. In 1978, he traveled to Poland in search of his grandmother’s grave and was shocked by the state of Jewish cemeteries there. He began returning to Poland regularly and took on the task of locating and restoring Jewish graves and burial sites.
Over the course of his decades-long efforts, more than 3,000 previously lost graves were identified, and thousands of tombstones were restored.
Tribute and Legacy
Widawski’s dedication to preserving Jewish heritage was widely recognized in Israel. President Isaac Herzog expressed his condolences following Widawski’s death, describing his life as a remarkable testament to the triumph of life, memory and renewal.
Widawski often said that his personal revenge against the Nazis was their defeat and the establishment of a strong State of Israel. His life story stands as a powerful example of human resilience. It was marked by unimaginable tragedy, decades of meaningful work and an unwavering commitment to preserving the memory of those who were lost.
