I always thought of him as one of the youngest people who was directly impacted by the Holocaust, despite having been spared its worst atrocities. Baruch Avidar, as he was known in Israel, died at the age of 84 last month and was buried in Rosh HaAyin, his home in recent years; he previously lived in Herzliya, Bat-Yam, and Haifa.

But he began his life in 1942 as Boris Grac (pronounced “Gratz”) in, of all places, Kazakhstan. Baruch was the son of my father’s first cousin Adam (Avram) Grac and his wife Rifka. The couple lived in Lodz, Poland, and for several years, they managed to barely stay ahead of the Nazis by continually moving eastward, eventually reaching the then-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.

The wrenching decision to flee their hometown was a life-saving one;  Adam’s parents (my grandfather’s sister and brother-in-law) and four of his five siblings were murdered in the Shoah; Rifka’s parents and five of her six siblings were also killed.

After the end of World War II, Adam, Rifka and Boris made an ill-fated return to Poland, where life for the few surviving Jews was unbearable. My grandfather in New York managed to send them funds to set up a new life in Italy, but that move also failed, as did a brief stint in pre-state Israel.

Eventually the family made its way to South America, to where my grandfather’s second sister had earlier emigrated.  (His third sister and brother-in-law, their five children and a granddaughter remained in Poland and were also all murdered by the Germans).

The Grac family lived in Montevideo, Uruguay, and in 1959, when Boris was 17, he wrote his first letter in English to my father and his siblings in New York, hoping to........

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