Posted on 12/08/2012 3:51:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
Nightmares often plague Abe Weinrib after he tells others about the torture he endured as a Jew during World War II. He talks of the corpses he dragged to ditches in Nazi camps, the loss of his family, the typhus that nearly finished him off after he was liberated.
Despite how difficult it is, he continues to describe the horrors. When asked to share his story, he says, how can he say no?
“It’s a miracle I survived,” said Weinrib, who will turn 100 on Tuesday, during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. “I don’t know how I survived.”
Weinrib’s lifetime of inspiring others will be celebrated tonight as he lights the first candle on a 13-foot public menorah at Easton Town Center.Hanukkah begins at sundown today and runs through sundown on Dec. 16.
“He’s lighting a candle of hope, of love and of meaning,” said Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann of the Lori Schottenstein Chabad Center in New Albany, which sponsors the Easton menorah lighting and another in Bexley on Tuesday.“He is the flame. His life and Hanukkah are synonymous.”
Hanukkah commemorates the reclamation by the Maccabees of the Second Jewish Temple after it was desecrated by the Syrian Greeks in the second century B.C. While the Maccabees found only one day’s worth of suitable oil to fuel the menorah, it miraculously lasted for eight days.
Weinrib was in his 20s, working in Polish factories owned by his wealthy industrialist uncle, when he was arrested and beaten daily for 51/2 weeks by Nazi police who believed that he knew where his uncle might have hidden gold, silver and diamonds.
(Excerpt) Read more at toledoblade.com ...
God bless him and his lost family.
Hanukkah commemorates the reclamation by the Maccabees of the Second Jewish Temple after it was desecrated by the Syrian Greeks in the second century B.C. While the Maccabees found only one day’s worth of suitable oil to fuel the menorah, it miraculously lasted for eight days.
God bless this man and prayers for his lost family. Prayers for Israel too.
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