The killing of at least 1,400 people in Israel by Palestinian Hamas militants from Gaza and the taking of more than 100 hostages has an impact around the world, especially in central and eastern Europe, with its strong Jewish ties and memories of the Holocaust. There, the rapture of a man caused particular pain and sorrow.
Alex Danzig, a 75-year-old scholar and historian Holocausthas spent the past 30 years working for Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial center, educating Jews and Poles about what happened in the final years of World War II.
But he lives in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, and his family has not seen or heard from him since October 7, the day of the Hamas attack.
There is a bitter irony here, notes the BBC. Although Alex was born in Poland after the war – in 1948, the same year as the creation of the state of Israel – his older sister, Edith, is a Holocaust survivor.
Born in 1941 under German occupation in what is now western Ukraine, her parents found refuge with a Polish mother and daughter, Maria and Halina Asanowicz, who rescued her from the Nazis.
This humanitarian act also allowed Edith’s parents to have greater freedom of movement, despite the occupation and persecution of the Jews, and they later testified that they themselves owed their lives to the Asanoviches.
So it would not be an exaggeration to say that Alex Danzig also owed his existence to these people. His early life was unremarkable. He spent his first nine years in Poland, and after his parents immigrated to Israel in 1957, he spent time in the army, fought in various wars, joined a left-wing youth organization, earned a degree in history, and raised a family on a kibbutz.
It was his return to Poland on a trip in 1986 and the visit to the site of Auschwitz – a death camp when the country was occupied by the Nazis – that fueled his interest in the Holocaust and in particular the complexities of Polish-Jewish relations. He spent the next few decades leading tours of the death camps and educating Israeli and Polish students.
Speaking to the BBC, his close friend and former colleague Orit Margilot – who worked with him in the Polish office at Yad Vashem – described him as “the most knowledgeable person I know”.
He says its impact has been huge. “He knows how to open hearts in this matter [πολωνοεβραϊκές σχέσεις]. It’s not really easy. It worked so well [στην Πολωνία] that everyone became his friend”.
“He has thousands of students who adore him and love him,” his son Matti told the BBC. “He’s a great teacher – every time I’ve been to one of his lectures I’ve been fascinated.”
But in addition to his spiritual work, he also enjoys working on the land and alternates between lectures and his home on the kibbutz. That’s where he disappeared when the Hamas men came.
Matti, who also lives in Nir Oz but survived the attack with his family, is today in the relative safety of the Red Sea resort of Eilat with other survivors.
Source: News Beast
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