Edelstein, Asher (Anshel)

Asher, son of Shalom and Miriam, was born on September 26, 1930 in Czechoslovakia, in the city of Khust, in the district of Marmorish, where his father was a talmid chacham, shochet and cantor in the synagogue in Khust, which composed dozens of Hasidic melodies and choral works. From the early age he discovered special tendencies for cantorial music and classical music (heredity from his father), and in his free time he loved the chess game.In the wake of the Munich Conference in 1938, Czechoslovakia, Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia was granted independence as a protectorate of Germany, and the Carpathian region was transferred to the control of Hungary, Germany’s ally. Poland, Romania and Hungary, and about 6,000 Jews lived on the eve of the Second World War, and as a part of the city’s Transcarpathian city, Hungary was transferred to Hungary and since then the city’s Jews suffered discrimination and anti-Semitic laws enacted in Hungary between 1938 and 1941, similar to the Nuremberg Laws. The Germans took control of Khust in March 1944, after the alliance between Hungary and Germany was breached, and a ghetto was set up in the city to which the Jews were transferred, and preparations were immediately made for deportations to concentration camps. In June 1944 the Jews were sent to the death carriages that led them to Auschwitz. All Asher’s family, parents and seven brothers and sisters perished in the Holocaust. Only he survived after he was transferred from camp to camp. From the end of the war he lived with his uncle in Romania, where he studied and worked in leatherwork, mainly bags and suitcases. In early 1952, Asher immigrated to Romania aboard the Transylvania, and on January 22, 1952, he arrived in Israel. He was accepted at his cousin’s home in Kiryat Binyamin, north of Haifa. A few weeks after his arrival, Asher was drafted into the IDF as a infantry battalion. Served faithfully and after less than a year was sent to a command course. On January 1, 1953, he was killed in a training accident during the command course in which he participated. Twenty-two years old. Who was laid to rest in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem. “The death of Asher is a terrible loss for the unit and for its comrades, whose commander was at the beginning of his progress and proved himself to be the most talented man, who was honest, a loyal friend, a wise and national-minded man. Like him. ” This hero is a “last scion”. The survivors of the Holocaust are survivors of the Holocaust who survived the last remnant of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters) who experienced the Holocaust in the ghettos and / or concentration camps and / or in hiding and hiding in territories occupied by the Nazis and / Or in combat alongside members of the underground movements or partisans in the Nazi-occupied territories who immigrated to Israel during or after World War II, wore uniforms and fell in the Israeli army.