Jehuda Widawski

Jehuda Widawski was born in 1919 in Turek

Widawski was born in 1919 in Turek, Poland, to Avraham and Dovrish Leah. At about 14 his family moved to Łódź. After the Łódź Ghetto was set up in 1940, the family ran a sewing workshop there that made dress collars for Nazi Germany.

When the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, the family was sent to Auschwitz. His parents and several siblings were murdered. He and his brother Yehoshua were sent to labor camps and assembled aircraft wings until the Soviet Army freed them on 9 May 1945.

After the war he returned to Łódź, married Dobrish Wasserzug and rebuilt a textile factory. He also helped the Irgun with arms shipments from Poland. In 1950 he immigrated to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv.

From the late 1970s he visited Poland regularly. With his friend Yosef Buchman he restored the Łódź cemetery and over 7,000 gravestones, and he rebuilt the ohel of the Sochaczew Rebbes. In 2012 he lit a torch at the state Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem.

He was a Sochatchov Hasid and had two children. He died in September 2026.