The IRWF found two Jewish Greek survivors
A brother and a sister who were hidden by two local Greek families during the German occupation in Greece in World War II told their story for the first time.
Moise Battino was 10 year-old when he was left alone and his parents were sent to concentration camps. A Greek local family in Piraeus kept and hid him from the German Nazis for almost a year and a half, until the end of the war.
Esther Mallah, Moises’s sister, was at that time 13 years old and she was also saved.
After the war, both Moise and Esther were united with some of their siblings who survived the war. They went to Israel and after a few years they moved to USA, where they both raised their families. Both Moise and Esther live now in the US and both have kids and grandkids.
Until today Moise is still in touch with the family of his rescuers.
To read more and watch the interview click here
The International Wallenberg Foundation supports young American author
Christopher Huh explores the life of Raoul Wallenberg
The IRWF board unanimously decided to support the creation of ‘My Name is Raoul’, a book by Christopher Huh, a second-generation Korean-American Christian teenager. The book will tell the story of WWII hero, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who helped save the lives of thousands of persecuted people in Budapest.
Christopher attends Rocky Hill Middle School in Clarksburg in Maryland and started drawing and writing his first book ‘Keeping my Hope’ when he was 14 years old. His goal was to write about something as cruel as the Holocaust in a language that his peers would be able to understand.
It took him about a year and a half and a thousand hours of research on World War II and the Holocaust to complete the book. ‘Keeping my Hope’ spreads the message of how powerfully racism and prejudice can affect those around us.
“This is a paramount example as well as a great experience for a young man of his age”, states Eduardo Eurnekian, Chairman of the Wallenberg Foundation.
To read more click here
Wallenberg Foundation to declare an entire Polish village as “House of Life”
Estera Borensztajn, fifteen years old in October 1947, recalled her amazing story.
She was born in 1932 in Sobolewo near Warsaw. Today she lives in Haifa, Israel.
After her father died in 1942 she would hide in the woods and sleep at night in the barns, cellars or attics at the homes of the peasants of her family’s acquaintance with her mother and two siblings. One day she reached the house of the people that had once bought her grandfather’s estate and she told them openly who she was. They were amazed but afraid to keep her. Finally, together with the other villagers, they decided to keep her in all the houses in turns, “so that everybody would be guilty and no one would turn anyone in”. The village’s name was Osiny”.
The board of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has decided to declare “House of Life” the entire village of Osiny.
To read more and watch the interview click here
“Houses of Life” Ongoing Program
“Houses of Life” is a unique educational program aiming to identify, pay tribute and spread the actions of solidarity of institutions or individuals that extended a hand to the persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The purpose of “Houses of Life” program is to identify and honor those public places such as convents, monasteries, churches, schools, and privately owned homes, where Jews were sheltered and given food and medicines.
“Seventy years after the end of the Second World War this educational proposal has an impact as it acknowledges and awards those who were on the front line and risked everything to help their fellow man” stated Mr. Eduardo Eurnekian, president of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
The program is taking place throughout Europe with the cooperation of Aleteia, the Catholic news agency, with direct involvement of its Editorial Director, Mr. Jesús Colina and Institutional Relations Manager, Ms. Silvia Costantini, http://www.aleteia.org/en.
