Holocaust Survivor Yehuda Aaron Vidashevsky, 107, Dies in Israel

Yehuda Aaron Vidashevsky, recognized as Israel's oldest Holocaust survivor, passed away at the age of 107. Vidashevsky dedicated a significant portion of his life to restoring Jewish cemeteries in Poland following his liberation from Nazi camps.

Born in 1919 in Turek, Poland, Vidashevsky came from a religious Zionist family. He lived through the Nazi invasion in 1939 and the subsequent establishment of the Łódź Ghetto. In August 1944, he and 14 family members were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His parents and older brother Gabriel were sent to the crematoria, while his younger brother Chaim Moshe perished in Buchenwald, and his sister Yocheved was murdered at Stutthof. Vidashevsky and his brother Joshua survived selection and were sent to a labor camp near Breslau, where they worked in an aircraft parts factory.

He recounted an incident where his honesty about being a merchant, rather than an engineer or skilled worker, earned him preferential treatment and double rations from a German supervisor. Vidashevsky became an unofficial leader among the workers, devising a plan to steal aircraft wings to meet production quotas and survive the harsh conditions and daily nine-kilometer marches to the factory. The ordeal ended with the camp's liberation by the Red Army on May 9, 1945.

After returning to Łódź and marrying Dabrish, who also survived the Holocaust, Vidashevsky and his family immigrated to Israel in 1950, settling in Tel Aviv. In 1978, he felt compelled to return to Poland, then under Soviet rule, and was dismayed by the destruction of Jewish cemeteries. His search for his grandmother's grave in the neglected Łódź cemetery led him to the mayor's office, where he obtained archives. Using this documentation, Vidashevsky began mapping the cemetery and identifying graves, eventually restoring over 3,000 tombstones. He also located and marked the graves of prominent rabbis, including Rabbi Avraham Bornstein and Rabbi Shmuel Bornstein of Sochaczew, and Rabbi Yisrael Taub of Modzhitz.

Vidashevsky made dozens of trips to Poland over the years, saving numerous cemeteries and graves. His efforts earned him recognition from Yad Vashem in 2012, when he was chosen to light a torch at the state's Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. President Isaac Herzog eulogized Vidashevsky, recalling a visit when the survivor was 104 and emphasizing his life as a testament to the "victory of life, memory, and revival."