Oldest Israeli Holocaust survivor dies – what he was remembered for

Yehuda Aaron Widawsky, the oldest Israeli Holocaust survivor, has passed away at the age of 107. Born in Turek, Poland, he endured the Łódź Ghetto and Auschwitz, losing his parents and brothers. After the war, he immigrated to Israel, restored thousands of tombstones in Jewish cemeteries in Poland, and lit a torch at Yad Vashem in 2012.

Yehuda Aaron Widawsky, the oldest Israeli Holocaust survivor, has passed away at the age of 107. He was born in the Polish town of Turek in 1919, and his family later moved to Łódź. With the creation of the ghetto in 1940, they were confined within its borders, working in the garment industry. In August 1944, during the liquidation of the Łódź Ghetto, the family was deported to Auschwitz. His parents and brother were killed; his sister perished in Stutthof, and another brother in Buchenwald. Widawsky and his brother survived the selection and endured forced labor, then were transferred to a factory in Friedland, where they assembled aircraft parts until the Red Army arrived in May 1945. After the war, he returned to Łódź, started a family, launched a textile business, and assisted the Etzel in the clandestine transfer of weapons. In 1950, he immigrated to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv. Later, he returned to Poland on a mission to restore Jewish cemeteries: he identified over 3,000 graves and restored more than 7,000 tombstones in Łódź. In 2012, he lit a memorial torch at Yad Vashem. On his 100th birthday in 2019, he said that building a family and living a peaceful life in Israel was the best response to the Nazis.