Baruch Dayan Emmes – Yosef Chaim Enzil, or “Saba Yosef” as he was affectionately known was niftar at the age of 91. Born in Poland in 1922, he found himself in a Russian labor camp when WWII erupted. As the German army advanced he was sent to work on the railroad in Germany. He managed to survive the war B”H, but not before being sent to Buchenwald, where liberation forces liberated him. One of the famous photos of the war included him, as seen in the article [See the red circle] with him lying while looking straight ahead eyes wide open.

He made his way to Eretz Yisrael on the Tel Chai and became a founder of Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi in the Beit Shean Valley. After the 1967 Six Day War, he became a partner in the rebuilding of Gush Etzion, as well as later doing the same in Chispin in the Golan Heights.

The niftar routinely accompanied youths taking part in the March of the Living, providing first hand eidus to the horrors of the Holocaust. He did this for decades. Inside the concentration camps he would sing with the children the pasuk from Tehillim, הפכת מספדי למחול לי, which he requested by sung at his levaya too.

MK (Yesh Atid) Rabbi Shai Piron, who accompanied the niftar on 25 trips to the death camps had great difficulty being maspid his friend, writing on his Facebook page “What can one say of one who was plucked from the fire, established a home and generations of disciples carrying on the memories of the Holocaust and took part in the rebirth?”

The levaya took place on Sunday, 7 Adar 5773 in Chispin in the Golan Heights.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)