Holocaust survivor Arie Ronski, 94, celebrated his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall on Monday with help from an unexpected source – the Border Police.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
Ronski, originally from Lodz in Poland, made aliyah in 1946 aboard an illegal migrant ship after his parents, one of his brothers, and three of his sisters were killed in Auschwitz.
The Border Police run an outreach program called Avot Ubanim, in which various units adopts Holocaust survivors.
Rasar Keshet Bashari, the Border Police education officer for the coastal region, took the rein in organizing the event.
"This is a project that has been running for a few years now. Two years ago, I got Arie's phone number from the education officer to connect him to one of the units and start the 'adoption' process," Bashari said.
"I got in touch with him, and in our first conversation he asked us to help him visit Jerusalem before he died," she added.
On Monday, Ronski called Bashari and told her, "We're going to Jerusalem."
When he arrived in the capital, Arie asked to visit the Western Wall.
"When we got out of the care, he told us, by the way, that he had never had a bar mitzvah," Bashari said. "When the war broke out he was 10, and when he was 13 he was in the Auschwitz death camp."
Ronski could not hide his excitement.
"It was very exciting to celebrate a bar mitzvah after 81 years. I had a lot of dreams about things I couldn't do. My entire childhood was taken from me, and now I've fulfilled one of my biggest dreams," he said.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
