Oldest Holocaust Survivor in Israel, Yehuda Vidavsky, Dies at 107

Yehuda Aharon Vidavsky, believed to be the oldest Holocaust survivor in Israel, passed away on September 13 at the age of 107. Vidavsky, born in 1919 in Turek, Poland, was the son of a religious family and later moved with them to Lodz in 1933, where he managed the family's textile business. During World War II, his family was forced into the Lodz Ghetto. On August 29, 1944, Vidavsky and his family were deported to Auschwitz. His parents and one brother perished there, another brother died in Buchenwald, and his sister was killed in Stutthof. Vidavsky and his brother Joshua were the only survivors from his immediate family.

From Auschwitz, Vidavsky was transferred to the Friedland labor camp near Breslau, where he worked at an aviation factory. He recalled an incident where he was the only one to truthfully state his profession as a merchant, earning him extra food from a surprised German supervisor. He described the daily grueling nine-kilometer walk to the factory and back, sustained by the hope of survival. The camp was liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945.

After returning to Lodz, Vidavsky married Dobrush, who had also survived the Holocaust with her mother and brother. They had a son, Avraham, and in 1950, they immigrated to Israel, settling in Tel Aviv, where their daughter Lea was born. In 1978, Vidavsky returned to Poland and was dismayed by the destruction of Jewish cemeteries and property. His efforts to map burial sites of ghetto victims led him to discover archives and begin documenting the vast cemetery in Lodz, which had served as a burial ground for nearly 200,000 Jews over 2,000 years, including approximately 50,000 during the ghetto period.

Vidavsky made dozens of subsequent trips to Poland to preserve additional cemeteries and graves. For his preservation work, he received recognition from Yad Vashem and was honored with lighting a torch at the national ceremony for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). In a 2017 interview, he stated, "My revenge on the Nazis is that they lost, and we have the State of Israel. We are free and strong, and no one can destroy us anymore."