Amsterdam – “I feel like I received warm regards from my Holocaust victim grandparents whom I never knew,” says Miriam Hanina, nee Tafelkruijer. The regards came in the form of two mezuzahs her grandparents hid in a wall in their Amsterdam home during the Holocaust, and which were found during the course of refurbishing work several years ago.
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The woman who currently lives in the house took the time and trouble to track down the original owners, leading to a “reunion” with their granddaughter Miriam who now lives in Even Shmuel, near Be’er Sheva.
“I never knew anything about my grandparents or about my aunt,” Miriam told Israel National News, “because my father, the only survivor of his family, refused to talk about anything having to do with that period. Now, all of a sudden, I feel that I have received a ‘hello’ from them.”
Both Miriam and the house’s current owner, Suzanne Rodrigues-Pereira, are descendants of Anusim (known in the past as Marannos) who arrived in Amsterdam from Portugal around the late 15th century.
In the course of routine refurbishing work inside the house several years ago, Suzanne found two mezuzah scrolls – small parchments with Torah passages that, in accordance with Biblical law, are affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes – wrapped one inside the other, close to the place where one should have been affixed. She immediately realized that this was a significant find, and set out to find who had put them there.
very nice a real mensh Suzanne Rodrigues-Pereira to go and track down the owners
Do not nean to minimize the story, but it would be interesting to know how they tracked down the grand-daughter.