An employee of the Jerusalem office of the Joint, Dr. Aron Weiss is well known throughout the world as one of the first individuals on the path to creating the Hesed system, to which the Khmelnytskyi Charitable Foundation “Hesed Besht” belongs. He often visits Ukraine in general and Khmelnytskyi in particular, spreading the ideas of the American Jewish Joint Committee “Joint”, charity and the revival of Jewish identity. However, Mr. Weiss also has stories that were previously known only to a narrow circle of people. On August 4, during his visit to our community, at the “Thia” Community Center, one of the most tragic stories was told to the general public.
Aron Weiss came to us as part of a visit to the Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil communities and participation in Shabbaton for our clients. People of all ages came to meet the Doctor of Sciences at the Thia Community Center, as today's speaker, thanks to his openness, is in demand among both young people and people of "golden" age.
The story of Aron Weiss concerned his childhood, which took place in the city of Boryslav in the Lviv region, as well as those terrible events that changed the course of history and entered it under the name “Holocaust”. At that time, little Aron, with his parents, brothers and sisters, lived among Ukrainians and Poles and did not even think that very soon this idyll would be unceremoniously disrupted. With the arrival of the Nazis, the family witnessed a Jewish pogrom with their own eyes. They were protected from the executioners by their Ukrainian neighbor, Yulia, who hid the Weiss family in the attic and defended them against the angry pogromists. The Jewish family also spent the entire occupation in the neighbor’s basement, even when the savior’s son went to the police. And after liberation, they repaid the savior with the same “coin”, hiding their son in their own fate, already from the NKVD…
This is not a simple story… It held the audience’s attention until the very last moment and left deep reflections in all its listeners. Everyone tried to put themselves in the shoes of Aron’s mother, who asked her neighbor for help and made the difficult decision to hide her former executioner. But the moral, recorded in the age-old Jewish wisdom, is traced as clearly as possible – “Love your neighbor…”
The story of Aaron Weiss is available to all Internet users: a few years ago, thanks to students from the United States, it was filmed and edited for future generations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nws4Yqf-Lzg). After meeting with the people of Khmelnytskyi, Mr. Weiss went to Ternopil and spent two more days giving talks and lectures to the participants of Shabbaton. All people respect the life position and energy of this man, and after the story they saw, they simply admire Dr. Aron Weiss.
