(Ha'aretz) Judy Maltz - An 86-year-old Polish-Catholic woman will be among the crowd at the opening ceremony of the 19th Maccabiah Games. Czeslawa Zak had always dreamed of flying to Israel to reunite, after all these years, with those Jews she and her family had saved during the Holocaust. This week, thanks to a fundraising campaign launched by March of the Living Canada, it has come true. For two years and seven months, Zak and her family provided shelter to 14 Jews from several different families, in their Warsaw apartment. In 1993, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum recognized Zak as a Righteous Among the Nations - people who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. On three separate occasions, German soldiers searched their apartment. At one point, when they came very close to the hideout, Zak got them to back away by saying the back room was filled with rabbits she was breeding and that she feared they might escape if they opened the entryway.
2013-07-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive