An extraordinary moment took place on Wedbesday morning, Erev Pesach 5786, at the Bais Medrash of Caulfield in Melbourne, Australia, as a siyum was made by 105-year-old Holocaust survivor Reb Berysz Aurbach.
Reb Berish, born Gimmel Elul 5680 (1920), hails from a Chassidishe family in Biala Podlaska, Poland, a town with deep roots in Gerrer Chassidus. He was raised in a home filled with warmth, Torah, and mesorah, together with his siblings – three older brothers, a sister, and a half-brother.
In an incredible neis, he was one of the last Yidden to be smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto before Pesach 5703 (1943), mere days before the uprising and the brutal destruction that followed. Tragically, aside from one sister who had made her way to Eretz Yisroel before the war, his entire family was murdered al kiddush Hashem.
With nothing left in Poland, Reb Berysz reached out to an uncle in Australia, who sponsored his visa and enabled him to rebuild on new shores.
And now, at the age of 105, he stands as a living witness to a century of upheaval and survival, and still learns, still finishes Masechtos, and still inspires those around him.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
