81 Years Later, A 91-Year-Old Discovers The Fate Of His Brother During The Holocaust

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a remarkable stroke of providence, a 91-year-old Jew was able to find out the fate of his brother during the Holocaust, and was even able to say Kadish at his grave.

The story was told by Yosef Lapko of Arizona to Rabbi Chaim Shaul Bruk, who is the director of the Jewish community in St. Petersburg in Russia. Lepko said that a few months ago, he had accompanied his grandfather, who is 91, to the museum at Yad Vashem. In the Children’s Memorial, where the names of 1.5 million children murdered in the Holocaust are announced, the two heard the loudspeaker say “Zalman Zlotin, 17, Russia”. When the old man heard the name, he fainted. After being revived, he said that “At this moment, I understood that my older brother, the only one whose fate we didn’t know since being separated in 1941, was killed at the age of 17.”

For years and years, the grandfahter had been trying to gain information about his brother but had been told that he did not appear in the lists of killed and wounded. After the announcement in Yad Vashem, Lepko and his cousin succeeded in locating documents which showed that his grandfather’s brother had been buried in a mass military grave 150 km from St. Petersburg. Lepko asked for Rabbi Bruk’s assistance in reaching this grave.

Rabbi Bruk reported that this week on Monday, Yosef and his grandfather landed in Russia and the next day visited the grave of his brother and were able to say Kadish for him.