Right: Abe Foxman tells the Holocaust story he shares with Rabbi Leo

Goldman to students at Akiva Hebrew Day School. After liberation, as a

Russian soldier, below left, Goldman came to Vilna, Poland, and carried

5-year-old Foxman instead of a Torah on Simchat Torah at the Great

Shul. Below right, Goldman with his wife, Sonia

and the Soviet courts ruled that I
belonged to my parents!'
The nanny lived with them dur-
ing the custody battle; Abe's father
had the job of bringing him back
to yiddishkeit. He did so in very
small steps.
For four years, Foxman went to
church every Sunday. Every night
before bedtime, he would kneel and
pray to God in Latin.
"My father taught me the
Shema," Foxman said. "And he said
to me, I no longer have to kneel.
`From now on, when you pray to
God this is how you pray'
He replaced the cross Abe
was wearing with a tallit katan
Rabbi
(fringed undergarment). To a young
boy of 5, both religious adornments
were signs of closeness to God.
"On the way to the Great Shul of
Vilna, we passed a church:' Foxman said,
describing the day he met the Russian sol-
dier. "I dropped my head; I crossed myself
because I was raised to respect the church.
And on the way, we passed a priest. I
dropped my father's hand and kissed the
priest's hand and went to shul."
After the Simchat Torah celebration, Abe
returned home and told his mother and
nanny, "I like the Jewish church; they sing
and dance and they have fun."
"That was my first step in my return to
yiddishkeit," Foxman said.
Now, as the national director of ADL,
Foxman is "dealing with a subject that
almost destroyed me, which is hate,' he

Leo Goldman and Abe Foxman embrace.

said. "At the same time ... trying to teach
people to do what my nanny did. My
nanny had extraordinary courage: The
courage at a terrible time to stand up
and to say no. No to anti-Semitism, no to
hatred, no to bigotry and no to prejudice"

The Soldier
Rabbi Leo Goldman was born in Poland
in 1919, became a rabbi in 1938 and was
drafted into the Russian army sometime
during the war. "It probably saved his
life said Rose Brystowski, who spoke
on behalf of her father. "The family who
were left were all exterminated!'
Now 91, Goldman is frail and uses a
wheelchair. He has trouble speaking.
Goldman saw action, was significantly

wounded and was moved further east
to recuperate in an Uzbekistan hospital,
Brystowski said. It was there he eventu-
ally met his wife, Sonia, a Lithuanian
refugee. They were married in 1943.
After the war, they moved to Sweden,
where Rose's brother, Joseph, was born.
They eventually moved to Oslo, where
Goldman became chief rabbi of Norway.
After a few years in Oslo, the young
family realized that Norway wasn't a
place to raise a Jewish family. Working
through a Lithuanian refugee organiza-
tion, they moved to Detroit in 1948, with
the financial help of local philanthropist
Louis Berry.
Goldman became rabbi at several
shuls, including the Tyler Shul and Young
Israel, before building Shaarey Shomayim
in Oak Park in 1959. He still leads a min-
yan on Shabbat and holidays.
Goldman also received a Ph.D. in edu-
cation from Wayne State University in
1957. He served as a mohel for 40 years
until the 1990s.
When his wife died in 1982, he became
a chaplain at Royal Oak-based Beaumont
Hospital until he retired in February.
The rabbi and Sonia raised three
children — Joseph, Rose and Vivian
(Aronson). Throughout the years, he
would tell them the story of "The Man
from Vilna."
The story spread throughout the commu-
nity, and the song "The Man From Vilna" was
written in 2004 after Goldman met a Toronto
songwriter on an airplane. The song was piv-
otal in reuniting the two survivors.

A 65 Year Wait
In 2007, Foxman shared the story with a
group of Israeli soldiers and Birthright
Israel participants at Yad Vashem, the
Holocaust memorial in Israel. Someone
asked him if the soldier was still alive.
A woman who worked at Yad Vashem
said she would do some research and
find out. She found a song about a similar
incident and a story told from the soldier's
perspective in a Chabad Lubavitch news-
paper. Connections were made and, in
January, Abe Foxman met Vivian Aronson
in Indianapolis. When she showed him a
1945 photo of her father as a Russian sol-
dier, Foxman became overwhelmed, Rose
said.
When they finally met, "it was an emo-
tional and inspirational moment, like
long-lost family members reconnecting;'
said David Brystowski, 15, the rabbi's
grandson and an Akiva student. "It is a
feeling and a moment that I will keep with
me for the rest of my life
Foxman told the group of students that
"Rabbi Goldman said to me this morn-
ing that we, the survivors, have a special
obligation, for we are the last witnesses to
what was.
"We are the generation that survived
Auschwitz, and we are also the generation
that has seen the rebirth of Jerusalem, of
the Jewish state and the Jewish people
Foxman said.
"We have that obligation to carry that
message as we do in the Hagaddah, b'chol
dor v'dor — we have to tell the story."

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April 22 • 2010

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