76 years after the Holocaust, a very moving find was recently discovered in a bunker in the Warsaw ghetto, which had secretly arrived in Israel: ten hundred-year-old pairs of tefillin, of Jews who lived there and were deported by the Nazis to the extermination camps.
The exciting find was discovered following a project by the Warsaw authorities, which in recent years has been demolishing old buildings in the ghetto in order to build new residential buildings on the site. The bunker was discovered by a construction worker, during the demolition of one of the buildings. The worker who was asked to enter the bunker to check what was inside – discovered ten pairs of tefillin as well as personal belongings and many books, apparently Torah, that were hidden in the bunker by Jews.
Immediately after the discovery, the Polish workers informed the representatives of the Shem Olam Institute with whom they had been in contact for years, and the institute’s representatives asked the workers to transfer the pairs of tefillin found to them – while maintaining the secrecy of the Polish government.
The workers agreed and so the tefillin was transferred in a covert operation, without the knowledge of the Polish authorities – they would surely have nationalized the precious property to their treasures. “The discovery of ten pairs of tefillin concentrated in one place, testifies to a Jewish way of life in the ghetto,” said the chairman of the Shem Olam Institute, Rabbi Avraham Krieger. , “Despite the horrors and cruel reality in which they lived.”