Today (Sunday) an identity card was awarded to Judy Neiman who recently immigrated from the USA. The certificate was awarded in an emotional ceremony together with the mayor Dr. Aliza Bloch, CEO of the Population and Immigration Authority Tomer Moskowitz, representatives of the Absorption and Immigration Department of Beit Shemesh Municipality and family members. Judy’s dream of living in Israel surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren is now coming true in Beit Shemesh.The initiative was promoted with the inspiring help of Moriah Eliassi, director of the registration and status area of the Jerusalem region at the Population and Immigration Authority.
Mayor Dr. Aliza Bloch: “The amazing Judy Neiman proves to all of us that at any age it is possible to take responsibility. Dear Judy chose the State of Israel and the city of Beit Shemesh out of a rare initiative and Zionism. Judy is a symbol and role model for all of us and we wish her many more years of work and activity in good health.”
Tomer Moskovitz, CEO of the Population and Immigration Authority:This morning we have the privilege of awarding an identity card to a true heroine. The class is a unique and exciting class and I am proud to come especially for it to the house of the sun, and next to the mayor, to give Mrs. Judy the identity card. We are in the weeks of comfort that follow the 9th of Av, and there is no greater comfort than the fulfillment of visible kibbutz prophecies.”
Judy Nyman’s story:
Judy was born in Czechoslovakia in a family with Orthodox Jewish-Zionist roots. Before the war, as a young girl she was a member of a secret Zionist organization, the name of which she no longer remembers, where she learned the song of the virtues of the food blessing to the tune of HaTikva.
One day of the week, at noon, she and her friend were walking in the city center when suddenly Nazi soldiers marched towards them, they realized that something was happening. The nightmare began when Judy, her mother and her two younger brothers were put on a cattle truck and soon found themselves standing in front of Joseph Mengele at the entrance to Auschwitz. Her mother wanted to hold her sister’s hands, and that was the last time Judy saw them. Judy’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins were all among the 6 million Jewish victims of the German genocide. In the selection Judy was sent to forced labor to dig ditches. Miraculously she survived the war. Her father also worked under duress and was rescued. Both reunited after the war. Judy’s maternal aunt, who had married in Brooklyn before the war, found Judy and brought her out of the ongoing anti-Semitic hell that prevailed in Europe after the war to the US and treated Judy as if she were her own. Judy married Bill Neiman, a Romanian Jew who left Europe Before the war. They had two sons, Howard and Mark. Bill was an accomplished baker.
Judy started working as a department store manager when the boys started high school. Both sons studied in the elementary yeshiva, and Howard continued in the high yeshiva of the Flatbush Orthodox yeshiva. Howard’s first wife, the late Naomi Zion, was Israeli. She died of cancer when their children were still young. Grandma Judy gave love and care from the bottom of her heart to her three young grandchildren who lost their mother. Seven years later, Howard married Rachel Smilovitz Rachel immigrated to Beit Shemesh two years ago, and her husband Howard also immigrated in March of this year. Howard’s daughters, Yiffit and Maya, immigrated years ago. Yiffit worked for years in the district seminary and married Mark Flenstein, a lone soldier from Spain. Maya served as a lone soldier in the T Q in the Air Force, where she met her husband Tzach Friedman. Lipit and Mark have a son, Nathaniel, who is one and a half years old, and they live in Jerusalem. Maya and Tzach have one-year-old twins, Abia and Odelia, and they live in Beit Shemesh. Rachel, Yipit and sons Howard and Mark worked It is very difficult to make Judy’s immigration a reality. Rachel’s son, Levi Teitz, immigrated to Israel a year and a half ago, and is getting married at the end of the month to Pnina Kraus, also a new immigrant. Howard’s son Oral, Mark Neiman’s wife Diane and their son Brian , and Rachel’s children Batia, Pinchas and Adret and her husband Sam, live in America, some of them see themselves as immigrants in the future.