The mother lovingly stroked the blond hair of her son. Slowly and carefully, she spoke to her son in a serious tone, “You must learn to be strong. From now on you are no longer my child—you are a man.” With this solemn parting, Ruth Weichert pulled her son, Henryk, to her heart. A quiver ran through her as she embraced her ten-year-old boy for what she knew might be the last time.

As Polish Jews, Mendel and Ruth Weichert had made the difficult decision to conceal their son’s identity by giving him new identification papers and placing him in an orphanage. The Nazi war machine was already marching into Poland, and inwardly they feared the worst for the future.

Their apprehensions were realized. Young Henryk never saw his parents, his brothers, or his little sister again. When the orphanage was taken over by German teachers, Henryk realized why his mother and father had instructed him, before leaving him at the orphanage, to never reveal his true identity as a Jew. After his time at the orphanage was over, the young boy longed to know what had happened to his parents.

The horrors of the Holocaust were sweeping across Poland. Jews were being rounded up everywhere and sent to concentration camps. Henryk’s blond hair and ability to speak German allowed him to blend into the urchin population.

Desperate to know the welfare of his family, one day he slipped through the sewer system into the infamous ghetto in Warsaw. He saw or heard nothing of the Weichert family, but he saw enough horrors to last a lifetime. After escaping from the ghetto and crawling into a dark hiding place for the night, Henryk awoke to find himself sleeping in the company of skeletons! Horrified, he fled.

The rest of the war Henryk managed to survive as a fugitive. Taking refuge in dark barns, feeding pigs on German farms, serving Nazi officers by performing menial tasks, stealing potatoes, and rummaging in garbage dumps for food, he managed to live while many of his comrades died. When the aggressive Russian counterinvasion of Poland took place, Henryk could hope to begin life anew. He was now fifteen years old.

After a long, futile search to find any of his surviving family, Henryk came to the sad conclusion that they had all perished in the Holocaust. He heard of the land of Palestine and the hopes of building a new home for the Jewish people. Henryk made his way slowly through the immigration process. Finally, the Jewish youth found himself on a crowded fishing boat that was headed for the Promised Land!

Alas! This hope was cut off when a British patrol plane spotted the boat and radioed the naval flotilla. The British forced the Holocaust survivors into camps on the island of Cyprus.

Finally, after many long weeks of waiting, Henryk was cleared to arrive in the land of Palestine! This was during the time when the British mandate over Palestine was about to expire. This time was also dangerous as Arabs and Jews were posturing to exploit the vacuum of power and seize as much territory as possible.

Henryk was welcomed with open arms into the new society of fellow Jews. For the first time, he could openly affirm his Jewish family roots. He chose a new Hebrew name, Zvi, which means “gazelle.” A new name went well with his new identity as he eagerly learned the Hebrew language. He took a new surname also, and the former Henryk Weichert became Zvi Kalisher.

Zvi was immediately inducted into one of the fledgling defense forces that were organizing to defend the Jewish settlements against the threatened invasion of Arab marauders. At the time Zvi was part of the Irgun (a Jewish underground paramilitary group), it was headed by Menachem Begin. For the first time, the Polish refugee was able to handle a real firearm and to gain valuable experience as a soldier.

On May 14, 1948, on the very eve of the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the sovereign state of Israel. As he spoke, no less than eight separate nations prepared for an invasion of the newly independent country. Military analysts around the world gave Israel no chance at all, predicting that the outmanned and outgunned Israeli defense forces would be overwhelmed and pushed into the Mediterranean Sea.

Zvi took an active part in the battle for Israel’s survival. His organization, the Irgun, was incorporated along with the Haganah and the smaller Lehi, two other underground fighting forces, formally becoming the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Fighting with limited supplies, untrained recruits fresh from the concentration camps, and outdated rifles and equipment, the IDF battled bravely against impossible odds. Part of Zvi’s training in war was the removal and diffusing of land mines. He was told that in this job, “you only get one mistake.”

At the bloody Battle of Latrun, Zvi was pinned down under brutal Arab gunfire. He saw men falling like wheat all around him, some of them having been in the country less than a week! Amazed at his own personal deliverance from the killing ground at Latrun, Zvi began to think soberly about the things of eternity. He had never been particularly religious. He knew little about the Bible. But a fellow soldier at Latrun told him about the day that the Lord delivered Joshua and gave him a great victory over the Amorites in the very same place, known in Scripture as the Valley of Ajalon.

While Zvi was on leave in the city of Haifa, he purchased his first Hebrew Bible. During his spare time throughout the duration of the war, he began reading it with eager fascination. He realized that God’s hand must have been upon him, sparing his life during the dark days of the Holocaust and now in the heat of battle. Zvi was particularly struck by the personal application of Psalm 27:10, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.”

After the war, a woman gave him a small Hebrew New Testament. In its pages, Zvi found that the New Testament’s words of life continued the story of God’s people. He read about Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah of the Hebrew people. Zvi began attending weekly meetings of believers in the city of Jerusalem, and he soon came to personal faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Messiah of Israel.

When Zvi’s boss learned that he had become a Christian, he immediately lost his job as a carpenter. This experience was his first taste of the hardship that faced an Israeli believer in Jesus. By God’s grace, he soon found a new job as a builder. Zvi became a faithful witness of the Gospel, pointing Arabs and Jews to the Lord Jesus as the Prince of Peace.

Zvi married Naomi, a beautiful young Jewish girl from Persia. She embraced Zvi’s faith in Jesus in spite of opposition from her family. The Lord blessed the couple with four children that they named Ruth, Mendel, Yona, and Eli.

Throughout his long life, Zvi boldly testified of his faith in Jesus, even in the yeshivas and synagogues of Jerusalem among the ultra-Orthodox. He took his Hebrew Bible and asked questions about Isaiah 53, Psalm 110, and many other passages that speak of the Messiah. He let the rabbis struggle for answers, then pointed them to the Messiah. He testified as did the Master of old, that Jesus and His Father were One. Zvi spoke fluently in six languages: Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew, English, German, and Russian. His background as a Holocaust survivor and veteran of Israel’s War for Independence gave him credibility, even among those who hated the Gospel. Often, Zvi would have rocks thrown at him, and many times he was mocked and spat upon.

Zvi Kalisher went to be with the Lord on November 17, 2014. His four children and a growing number of grandchildren continue his faithful witness in the next generations, testifying of the Lord Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Messiah of Israel.

Sources and Further Reference:

McQuaid, Elwood. Zvi: The Miraculous Story of Triumph over the Holocaust. Bellmawr, NJ: Friends of Israel, 2000.