An orphan from the Holocaust shared his life story at a Telfed Jerusalem & Wits Alumni in Israel event at The Chamber of The Holocaust on Mount Zion. Besides sharing Rabbi Alex Rosin’s physical and emotional journey, this gathering was of international appeal as a group from Zimbabwe was scheduled to attend this lecture. A message of tragedy and healing was to be shared with our guests.
The event began with a welcome greeing from Roy Scher, head of Telfed’s Jerusalem regional committee, after which the curator of the Chamber of The Holocaust Museum, Rabbi Aharon shared the history of the establishment of The Museum. Bev Ehrlich read out a paragraph from the Zimbabwean delegation in their absence.
They wrote: “As you may be aware that our current leader is the perpetrator of Ndebeles Genocide so it is working flat out to conceal its involvement with this Genocide ,so all vocal voices about resolving this issue are put under 24 hrs surveillance, especially the Chiefs. For the past 20 days all the Chiefs I came with have serious difficulties in going outside Zimbabwe.”
He goes on to write: “I am frustrated and disappointed that after all preparations we couldn’t leave Zimbabwe due to surveillance I have lost so much time and money preparing for this trip but by God’s grace we will try again probably next year, my apologies!”
Dr Les Glassman, Wits Alumni Israel, who organized this awesome event, introduced our honored guest, Rabbi Alex Rosin, who begun to share his life story. Rabbi Rosin spoke of his father, a deeply religious man, who had buried his beloved wife after she became gravely ill. Rabbi Alex Rosin’s fascinating story unfolded, captivating the audience’s for almost 2 hours. Alex retells his story from the tender age of 1, never knowing his mother or his father. In beautiful clear English, this amazing hero, shares sorrowful details of how he & his 2 older sisters were taken by their father to a peasant Catholic widow, who in turn was given a large sum of money to look after them until after the war, when they would be redeemed by him, if he survived, or by a particular member of the local Jewish community. A sequence of events revealed G- D’s Hand guiding every step of the way.
Alex explained that his “mother” was so poor, for 6 years his diet consisted of potatoes, rice, cabbage, tomatoes & bread on a few occasions. His oldest sister died of starvation, and the Polish woman gave his other sister away, due to extreme poverty.
The story continues with in-depth detail of how he was found, with whom he lived & began his life as a believing Jew, how he got to be part of the Kindertransport through the devotion & dedication on Rabbi Schonfeld ז”ל to England, and to finally starting a family of his own in France. To do justice to this amazing hero, I strongly suggest watching Alex’s full presentation.
The event closed with Dr. Les Glassman thanking Rabbi Alex Rosin & Roy Scher presenting Alex with a token gift of appreciation.
Written by Roy Scher