Survivor raises cash for oldest Righteous Gentile
A HOLOCAUST survivor living in Israel is among those who donated more than £900 towards the cost of a medical bed for a Polish woman believed to be the oldest surviving member of the Righteous Among the Nations.
Joe Erlichster, 75, helped raise $1,200 (approximately £950) to provide a special bed for Krystyna Danko, 102.
Ms Danko, an orphan, had been welcomed into the home of a Jewish family, the Kokoszkos, prior to the Second World War.
During the war, she managed to hide three members of the Kokoszko family and successfully sent a fourth to be hidden in an orphanage near Warsaw.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, declared her to be one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1998, describing how she “at great personal risk, went to incredible lengths to help the Kokoszko family escape the Nazis.”
Mr Erlichster donated the money after a crowdfunding effort set up by Jonny Daniels, the British-Israeli founder of the From the Depths Holocaust commemoration group, which operates primarily in Poland.
Mr Daniels had spoken to Ms Danko’s family and had found out that they were unable to afford a special medical bed which she required.
Mr Erlichster donated the money in the memory of another non-Jewish family, the Kulinskis, who saved his own family during the war, saying it was “part of our duty as Jews to recognise what some brave souls in Poland and elsewhere did.”