Highland Park, NJ – Miracle: Holocaust Survivor Who Donated Sefer Torah Finds Old Friend Still Alive, Not Seen For 50 Years. Exclusive To VIN News

Highland Park, NJ – In an emotion-laden ceremony on Monday, Labor Day, holocaust survivor Hersh Hanfling donated a Sefer Torah to his shul, the Agudah of Highland Park, NJ, in loving memory of his family members who were wiped out during the Shoah. Hundreds of people turned out in a community-wide display of tears, warmth and support for what Agudah Rabbi Yaakov Drucker characterized as a “victory over the Nazis.”

Over the decades, Hersh never used the German reparation [reported first by VIN News] checks he received for personal use; Instead he saved the money until he had enough to purchase the Sefer Torah, turning evil into good. “He invested in eternity,” Rabbi Drucker said. You would have thought that this was enough excitement to last Hersh a lifetime.

But as the authors of “Small Miracles of the Holocaust, ” (in whose new book Hersh’s story appears) know well, one miracle often begets another, and this is precisely what happened to Hersh exactly one day after the Hachnosos Sefer Torah ceremony.

Two days before the event, Hersh’s son Phil Hanfling donated a copy of his father’s newly-minted memoirs to the library of Yeshiva University, where he is employed as a financial analyst. On Tuesday, September 2nd, the day after the Hachnosos Sefer Torah, Phil received an excited phone call from YU librarian Zalman Alpert. “You are not going to believe this,” Zalman said.

That morning, an elderly gentleman by the name of Hillel Himmel — a voracious reader and fixture at the YU library – walked through the door, and the librarian motioned him aside. “I know you like to read Holocaust memoirs,” the librarian said, ” and I just got in a brand new one that I thought you’d like to see.” Zalman pointed to Hersh’s brand new book, entitled, “”Plucked from the Fire of the Holocaust.” The elderly gentleman squinted at the author’s name. “Hersh Hanfling?” he repeated slowly. “Hersh Hanfling? I know Hersh Hanfling! We were together in three camps — Litermerice, Schachwitz, and Theresienstadt, and then in DP camp in Landsberg, Germany, afterwards. Hersh Hanfling was my friend!”

The librarian called Phil Hanfling, who immediately gave the elderly gentleman his father’s number. The two men, who were reunited over the telephone last night, had not seen each other for fifty years.

YU librarian Zalman Alpert told VIN News “Its pure ‘Hashgocha Puritas’ and most astonishing part, is that my father too is from the same camp”, and all of us are ‘shomeri torah and fruma Yiddin”.