Yehuda Widawski, a Holocaust survivor and guardian of Jewish memory, has died

Yehuda Widawski was born in 1919 in Turku, in central Poland. He was the second of four siblings. In 1933, he and his family settled in Łódź, where the family founded and for years ran a textile factory, sewing uniforms and underwear for the Polish army.

Everything changed in September 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland. The Widawski family lived in the Łódź ghetto. Despite the dramatic conditions, Yehuda and his relatives ran a kitchen for the needy in the ghetto.

The destruction of the family and the fight for survival

In August 1944, the ghetto was liquidated and the Widawskis were deported to Auschwitz. There, Yehuda lost his parents and most of his siblings. He and his youngest brother, Yehoszua, were sent to the Friedland labor camp, where they worked in the production of airplane wings. After being liberated by the Red Army, they returned to Łódź, discovering that they were the only survivors of their family.

After the war, Yehuda Widawski founded his own textile factory, married Lea Dobrysz and became involved in helping the Jewish organization Irgun. In 1950, he emigrated to Israel, where he ran several businesses. However, the real mission of his life was the fight for memory - from 1978 he regularly returned to Poland to find and restore Jewish graves destroyed by the Nazis.

Over the course of several decades, Yehuda Widawski helped identify and restore over 3,000 graves, including the burial places of outstanding rabbis.