Yehuda Widawski, Israel’s oldest Holocaust survivor, dies at 107

Yehuda Aharon Widawski, known as Israel’s oldest Holocaust survivor, has died at the age of 107.

Born in Poland in 1919, Widawski died on Sunday, Israeli media and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum reported. He survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, while most of his family members were executed during the Nazi occupation.

After the end of World War II, he moved to Israel in 1950, where he began building a new life.

Since 1978, Widawski had been involved in restoring Jewish graves in Poland. According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, he contributed to identifying and marking more than 3,000 Jewish graves.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog extended his condolences to his family and described Widawski’s life as “an admirable testament to the triumph of life, memory and a new beginning.”

During the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered approximately 6 million Jews in Europe.

Data published in April by an Israeli government agency shows that around 109,000 Holocaust survivors still lived in Israel.