Rabbi Ephraim Mol, a Lubavitcher chossid and Holocaust survivor who was scheduled to recite the “Kel Malei Rachamim” prayer at the memorial event, passed away on Thursday night after suffering a stroke.
Holocaust survivor Rabbi Ephraim Mol, died Thursday night after suffering a stroke prior to the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Yad Vashem.
He was 85 years old.
Rabbi Mol, a Lubavitcher chossid, had been scheduled to recite the “Kel Malei Rachamim,” prayer at the memorial event, but collapsed a day before it took place.
Mol was born on March 8, 1938, in Brussels, Belgium. In 1942, two years after the Nazi invasion, his family attempted to flee to Switzerland via Besançon, France, according to Yad Vashem.
The Gestapo caught the family and arrested his parents, and Mol was taken by French police to be cared for in a monastery in the city of Besançon while his parents began their journey through the Drancy Transit Camp to Auschwitz.
Mol was later adopted by the French Jewish Weil family and lived with them in Paris. But as the persecution against French Jewry reached its peak he was hidden in an apartment until the country’s liberation in 1944 by Lucie Cartier, who was recognized as a righteous among the nations by Yad Vashem in 1971.
After the fall of the Nazis, Mol went on to fight for France in the Algerian War, then in 1960, immigrated to Israel, and settled in Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in northern Israel.
He is survived by his wife Rachel and their children; Mrs. Bella Lifshitz, Basya Mol, R’ Yoel Mol, and Mrs. Avigail Gur.
The Levaya will take place today in Eretz Yisroel from his home on 7 Aharon Brand St. in Jerusalem to the Beit Shlomo Shul and then to the Chabad section of the Har Hazeisim.
Baruch Dayan Haemes.
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