Thanks to his mother’s quick think­ing (she sized up the sit­u­a­tion as soon as she saw the Nazis sort the cat­tle cars by men, and women and chil­dren to dif­fer­ent cars) she grabbed her sev­en-year-old son’s back with both hands and shoved him in the direc­tion of the men, say­ing: ​“Tulek, take Lulek. Good­bye Tulek; good­bye Lulek.” Tulek was Lulek’s (Israel’s) old­er broth­er, Napthali. When the door of the cat­tle car shut behind them, the young Israel was angry and bereft, not real­iz­ing that his moth­er had saved his life. For the rest of the war, through all the prison camps, the tran­si­tion to dif­fer­ent trains, dif­fer­ent camps, Napthali pro­tect­ed his lit­tle broth­er, Israel — even leap­ing from one train car to anoth­er when the broth­ers became sep­a­rat­ed and Napthali deduced that the cars might lat­er be detached. Enter­ing Buchen­wald, Israel sur­vived the ini­tial shav­ing, vac­ci­na­tion, etc. due to a kind gen­tile doc­tor, a pris­on­er from Czecho­slo­va­kia, who did not believe lit­tle Israel’s dec­la­ra­tion of being fif­teen, and explained to Napthali that the child would die if giv­en the serum, full strength. When Napthali told him the truth, that his broth­er was only sev­en-and-a-half, the doc­tor gave him only a half vial. When the broth­ers were sep­a­rat­ed and Israel went to a dif­fer­ent block, the Russ­ian pris­on­ers were kind to him and one pris­on­er, Feodor, pro­tect­ed him, and act­ed as a mes­sen­ger between the broth­ers. The sto­ry of how Napthali fought to stay near his lit­tle broth­er until the end of the war, and how the broth­ers final­ly reached Israel after Buchen­wald was lib­er­at­ed in 1945, is a rich, beau­ti­ful­ly told sto­ry. Lit­tle Israel Meir, one of the youngest sur­vivors of Buchen­wald, and descend­ed from a 1,000-year unbro­ken chain of rab­bis, grew up to become Chief Rab­bi of Israel. He is also chair­man of Yad Vashem.