Letter to the Editor

Raymond Ellis

After several years of various types of volunteer work, approximately five years ago ( that was in 2021) I decided I wanted to help someone who spent time in Auschwitz Concentration Camp. I approached Amcha which is an organization that assists survivors of Nazi Concentration camps. They matched me with Zvi Frank who was a carpenter in Auschwitz. He was branded with the number 161103 on his arm.

The Amcha official met me at the old-aged home in Tivon and after twenty minutes the official left me alone with Zvi because she noticed that we made an immediate good connection of communication.

I was lucky to get a very positive and optimistic person. Zvi was an amazing person and we soon were talking just like good friends. Zvi told me a lot about his time at Auschwitz where he worked under the supervision of a Nazi officer as a carpenter. He was a very skilled carpenter and, luckily for him, the Nazi War Machine needed such skills.

Zvi witnessed the tragic operations of Auschwitz on a daily basis. Every day thousands of Jews were brought to Auschwitz to be gassed or in some cases shot by firing squads. Every day the workers like Zvi were checked to see if they were strong enough to work and, if not, there were the daily killings of the workers in the gas chambers or by firing squads.

Several times Zvi was taken to the gas chambers or lined up in front of firing squads because he was sick or injured but each time his Nazi officer intervened and told them to spare Zvi because he was an expert carpenter and needed by Nazi Germany. Zvi said that those times when he was taken away to be murdered but saved at the last minute were very tough mental situations for him to cope with.

Zvi was on the forced march to Germany from Poland as the Allied armies were closing in and he was one of the very few to survive the forced march where thousands died along the way.

After the war in Germany, when Zvi became strong enough, he was given the job of Headmaster of an Ort school of carpentry and in 1947 he went on Aliyah to Israel.

In Israel, Zvi worked for a carpenter in Haifa and afterwards opened his own carpentry business in Tivon where he married and had a son and a daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I visited Zvi once a week and joined him during many activities like lectures, playing billiards, socializing with him together with his friends and attending concerts where he was the leading tenor singer right up to the time he died on Friday 14th April 2023 just three months before his 100^th birthday. By chance I spoke to him on the phone a few hours before he passed away.

Zvi was also the leading teller of jokes at the old aged home and during the social get togethers with his friends we were all treated to many jokes. Just the week before he passed away, he had the whole circle of friends and including myself laughing with tears in our eyes from his excellent jokes.

I feel honored to have met Zvi and to know such an amazing positive person who was able to move on and conquer the world even though he witnessed and suffered so much horror as a young man.  

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