Exhibition honours unsung Slovakian hero

V NORTHWOOD AND Pinner Liberal Synagogue marked HMD by hosting the British launch of an exhibition telling the story of a Slovakian Jew who enabled more than 1,300 people to flee the Nazis.

The exhibition, Aron Grünhut — Rescuer of the Jews and Human Rights Defender, has been sponsored by the Slovakian embassy. Its UK amabassador, Lubomir Rehak, performed the opening with Israel’s deputy ambassador, Sharon Bar-li.

Aron Grünhut’s story is now being shared after being suppressed for decades by Communist governments in Czechoslovakia.

He used his business acumen to negotiate with Nazi authorities and their collaborators to organise an “illegal” transportation of Jews to Palestine and connect ten Jewish Bratislavan children with Sir Nicholas Winton’s Kindertransport.

Sir Nicholas’s eldest son, Nick Winton, was among the guests, along with a group of 20 teenagers who used the exhibition as a basis for part of their studies.

The Slovakian ambassador and embassy have developed a relationship with NPLS, which has a “survivor” Torah scroll from the eastern Slovakian town of Spisska Nova Ves.

NPLS senior rabbi Aaron Goldstein said: “We are honoured to bring together Israel, Slovakia and the UK in revealing a truth which for so long was hidden by a controlling totalitarian regime. May everyone who hears of Aron Grünhut heed the warning of history.”

Ms Bar-li added that the story “teaches us about the Jewish virtues of both individual responsibility and the importance of communal life. It exemplifies the courage to care and not to be a bystander in the face of great darkness.”