who's in the kitchen: judy joszef

Hope and Hatikvah at survivor’s levaya

Harry Engelman A"H

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A little over two months ago, I wrote a column in honor of my dear friend, Debbie Shafran’s father Harry Engelman, A”H. My husband Jerry and I met with Engelman to hear his stories of growing up in Czechoslovakia, and how well he and his fellow Jews were treated, due to the democratic constitution put into place under that country’s first president, Tomas Masaryk. He spoke of the hakarat hatov to Masaryk.

Engelman was a holocaust survivor, a war hero who arrived in Israel on Aliyah Bet and navigated the ship he was on, The Hatikvah. In Israel, he was part of the Haganah and Golani Brigade.

While in a detention camp on Cyprus, after the war, he made two plaques, by hand with crude tools he made himself — one was for President Masaryk and the other, a memorial stone, was for the six million Jews who never had a matzevah. An image of that handmade plaque adorns the entrance of his family’s burial society in the cemetery where survivors of his region are buried.

Last week, after a short illness, Harry Engelman A”H passed away peacefully, with his daughter Debbie by his side.

At the levaya, Debbie spoke eloquently and beautifully about her father. She said that he didn’t want her to cry, and that it shouldn’t be a sad day. After all, “he was blessed to have lived 91 years, which was 70 more than he ever thought he would ever live to see.” He wanted the day to be a celebration of his life with balloons instead of a funeral. He also wanted Chopin’s Funeral March to be played. He had heard it when he was a young boy and loved it.

As she spoke to her dad in the hesped, she apologize to him, in that she wasn’t sure she was allowed to play the music or have the balloons.

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