My grandfather was a rancher in Europe who sent entire trainloads of meat to Vienna. He however never lost his empathy for the poor. He kept a separate apartment with a fully stocked kitchen open day and night to the poor travelers who went from town to town begging for money for food or to make Yom Tov.
When he and his family were taken to the Ghetto, my mother who has blond hair and blue eyes went through the sewer system to work to buy food. My grandfather even in those circumstances made sure those strangers that had no other source of food was fed. When the ghetto was being evacuated my mother and grandfather were left behind, as they were not selected for the transport to the concentration camps.
In the middle of the night, my grandfather woke my mother up and took her to the community kitchen. He lifted her up and put her in one of several large soup pots and ordered her to stay until she heard no more noise. After a short while she heard screaming, shooting in the distance, then nearby, and the Nazis lifting the lids of soup pots, leaving her pot untouched. She stayed in the pot that whole day, the next night and the next day and only after it is completely silent, did she leave. To her horror, at the foot of the pot that she was in was the body of her father shot to death in an apparent attack upon the advancing Nazi soldier. She pulled his body to the edge of the ghetto and buried him.
On the same day that my grandfather was killed, but several years later I was born. As my father's middle name is Yaakov, and as my mother was the only survivor of her extended family, no child was named after him. On this land that I bought fifteen years ago, I want to dedicate this Torah community to him. As he sacrificed his life to save my mother when all hope of perpetuating Judaism seemed lost, it is particularly fitting to dedicate this living memorial, a permanent torah community, in this time that perpetuating new communities in Shomron seems hopeless.
