Holocaust Survivor’s Falafel is Tribute to His Survival
Every Jan. 18th, the anniversary of his darkest day, David ‘Dugo’ Leitner eats a falafel as a tribute to his mother’s love and that he’ll never go hungry again.
David ‘Dugo’ Leitner was born in 1930, in the town of Nyíregyháza, some 200 kilometers from Budapest in Hungary, the second oldest of four children. In March 1944, amid the Nazis’ frenzied Jewish persecution, he and his family were deported to a ghetto a few weeks after Passover, and then three weeks later to Auschwitz. They arrived on the holiday of Shavuot.
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(JTA) â This year we celebrated Passover early, on a Sunday a few days before St. Patrickâs Day. My adult children will disperse before the official holiday, but with the darkest days of the pandemic behind us, we have much to celebrate.
In Israel, a Holocaust survivor has made falafel a symbol of Jewish resilience January 22, 2021 12:23 pm David Dugo Leitner, left, meets Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to have falafel together in Jerusalem, Jan. 17, 2019. (Mark Neiman/GPO)
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(JTA) On Jan. 18, 1945, the Nazis at Auschwitz forced David Leitner and about 66,000 other camp prisoners to march through the snow. Underfed, exhausted and wearing nothing but his camp uniform, Leitner, only 14 at the time, began to fantasize about his mother’s bilkalach small golden buns of bread made in his native Hungary and across Central Europe.
Most of the prisoners died in the death march, but Leitner, known by his nickname Dugo, survived and immigrated to Israel shortly after the Holocaust.
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