Metro

SHARED STORY I ON THE COVER

After 65 years,
a shared
story reunites
Holocaust
survivors, ADL's
Abraham Foxman
and Rabbi Leo
Goldman
of Oak Park.

Rare
Reunion
44c

comforting his people.
They would share their story with oth-
ers through the years and a song would
be written about it, but it wouldn't be
until earlier this month, on April 8, when
Abraham Foxman, national director of
the New York-based Anti-Defamation
League, walked into Rabbi Leo Goldman's
Oak Park home, that the little boy and the
Jewish soldier would be able to hold each
other again.
"I've been waiting a long time," Foxman
told 75 students, grades 8-12, during a talk
at Akiva Hebrew Day School in Southfield.
"This morning, before coming to you, I
met the rabbi. It's so emotional."

The Boy

Rabbi Leo Goldman of Oak Park and

Abraham Foxman, national Anti-
Defamation League director, at Akiva

Hebrew Day School in Southfield

Harry Kirsbaum
Special to the Jewish News

I

nside the near-ruin that once was
the Great Shul of Vilna, Lithuania,
a Russian-Jewish soldier in his 20s
approaches a father holding his 5-year-old
son.
It is Simchat Torah, Sept. 30, 1945, and,
in a city that once called itself home to
100,000 Jews, of which 3,000 survived, the
shul has been stripped of almost every-
thing, including the Torahs.
The soldier asks if the boy is Jewish,

14

April 22 • 2010

then says, "During the war, I traveled
many kilometers as a soldier, and I did not
see many Jewish children alive. May I take
him as my Sefer Torah?"
The soldier dances with the boy who, to
everyone in the sanctuary, represents the
rebirth of the Jewish people.
That day had a profound impact on
both their lives. The boy, who had been
hidden and raised Catholic until the end
of the war, would begin his return to yid-
dishkeit that day and become a protector
of the Jewish people. The soldier would
become an Orthodox rabbi, teaching and

Foxman told the story of being born in
Belarus as his Polish parents were try-
ing to stay ahead of the Nazi Germany
advance. A Catholic nanny took care of
the baby as they traveled, but when the
Nazis caught up to them in Vilna and an
order went out that all Jews were to go to
the ghetto, a difficult decision was made.
The nanny suggested she take the baby as
her own and meet up with Abe's parents
after the war.
"Throughout the years, whenever I
had a fight with my parents, I would
always say to them, You see? You don't
love me. You left me,"' Foxman said.
"They could never, ever explain to them-
selves, much less to me, how they made
the decision. How do parents make a
decision to leave your child?"
It was the most significant decision
they made, he said. "Very few families
with an infant survived the war. Their
only desire in life was to survive to come
back for me."
All four survived the war, but hap-
piness turned to conflict when they
reunited.
While the nanny risked her own life to
protect Foxman, a circumcised baby with
no papers or proof of identity, she also
had him baptized and gave him a new
name.
"The woman who saved my life now
said I belonged to her and the Catholic
Church:' he said. "We had a custody battle