Minister (Likud) Yossi Peled stated that when he joined the dignitaries at Ben-Gurion International Airport to greet Pope Benedict XVI on Monday, seeing the Vatican clergy in their robes, he had “flashbacks”, explaining he survived the Holocaust as an infant due to the kindness of a Catholic family who took him in.
 
Peled (Mendlowitz) was born in Belgium and during the war; he and his siblings were turned over to a Christian family in Antwerp. He was 6-months-old, and he remained in the Christian home until age 8. His father was among those murdered in Auschwitz. After the war, his mother, who managed to survive, located him and rounded up her children.
 
As the pontiff moved past the waiting VIPs, he halted next to Peled as Foreign Ministry official Itzik Eldan conveyed the story of the retired IDF major-general.
 
Peled told the press “for me, there was no deliberation if I was going to take part in the ceremony, to meet the leader of over one billion followers around the world. I had Goosebumps when I shook his hand. For a moment, I was 8-years-old again”.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)