On January 10th 2018 Olek Sarel, known in Selvino as Alexander Czoban, passed away after a long illness.
Olek Sarel was born in 1929 in Lvov (Poland), son of Abraham Alfred Czoban and Henryka Czoban, brother of Aviva. During the war Olek was wandering through villages and forests escaping the Nazis. He eventually arrived to Selvino, and later on to Israel, where he became a technician in the Israeli aviation industry. His sister Aviva, who remained hidden in a convent, became a secretary in a nursery school in Israel.

Here in Selvino, here, for the first time since the war, we returned to feel the human warmth … For the first time …” said Olek.

Olek Sarell-2018-01-10-lutto

“Every time a Child of Selvino passes on, the House empties itself of its original inhabitants, its glorious past, and becomes once more an orphan…
Another piece of the dilapidated wall crumbles..

The cheerful sounds of children, silence
prayers ceases.

And we, the new generations are in sorrow
mourning with the family.

But without a doubt, we must continue
to gain our confidence from those who preceded us.

Olek has had “several lives”.
one of them was, the revival of the hope, culture and traditions cultivated in the House of Selvino.

1983 in Selvino

1983 in Selvino

Olek asked the “Children”, now grown adults, to gather on Independence Day and celebrate the songs and stories of the day’s gone by.

He organized the trip to Selvino in 1983 and the twinning between Selvino and Ze’elim in 1996, and we followed him.

And when in 2009 he was organizing an exhibition at Yad Vashem.
Against obstacles inflicted on him, in the midst of struggles and difficulties, but with great determination and admiration, he finally succeeded.

 

We can still hear his voice and see his picture next to the images of the exhibition, all represent his uniqueness and the sanctification of life, courage , he so much expressed with all his presence.
May his memory be blessed.”

Written in Hebrew by Miriam Bisk:


מדי פעם כאשר אנו נפרדים מילד סלבינו, מתרוקן הבית מדייריו המקוריים, מן העבר,
ושוב בית מיותם.

עוד פיסת קיר מתפוררת,
צהלת ילדים דוממת, תפילה נבלמת.

ואנו דור ההמשך, כואבים ,
עם המשפחה מתאבלים
אך ללא עוררין, מצווים להמשיך ולשאוב את בטחונינו מן ההולכים.

לאולק היו פרקי חיים אחדים,
ובאחד מהם דאג להחיות את התקווה והתרבות שטופחו בבית בסלבינו.
אולק דרש באוזני ה״פעוטים״ והצעירים שבנתיים התבגרו, להתכנס ולחגוג את חגיגת העצמאות בארץ, בשירים ובסיפורים בנוסח אותם הימים.

כמו גם דאג לארגן את ברית הערים התאומות לראשונה, ואשר בעיקבותיה באנו אנו.

וכאשר ביקש לארגן את תערוכת ילדי סלבינו ביד ושם, לא נכנע
למיכשולים שנערמו בפניו, ותוך מאבקים לא קלים, בנחושות רבה, המעוררת הערצה, צלחה לו המשימה.

הקול האישי שלו עדין נשמע, ומראו לצד התמונות התלויות בתערוכה, מייצגים את ייחודו וקידוש החיים אותם ביטא באומץ רוחו.
יהא זכרו ברוך


Alex Olek Sarel 1996
Alex Olek Sarel Alex Olek Sarel
Alex Olek Sarel Alex Olek Sarel

Eulogy for Alex Sarel by Tali Amitai

How does one part from a man that was an integral part of the Selvino home, and for me since my birth?
When I stand here over your grave, in this silence, I see in my mind’s eye many pictures of events you took part in – always meticulously dresses, unlike my father, upright, practical and make sure that everything will work according to your plan.
Our connection had started before my birth, when you arrived with your sister and group of friends that came together from Lodz to Selvino. That is where your and other’s journey to a new life started, life after…
There you learned value of ‘doing’, leadership and taking on responsibility, and possibly was the road you followed for the rest of your life.
In Israel you first had a period of training in Kibbutz Ramart Hasharon, you were among the progenitors of Kibbutz Ze’elim, joined the army, raised a family, studied, and became a great asset to the young state.
Apart from raising your family, working in the Aeronautic industry and social activities, you always had the will and strength to initiate and move the meetings of your group, to keep contact with your other family – the Selvino Children and the councilors that were close to your heart.
You were the secretary and organizer of the Selvino children group, and as such, organized activities, tree planting in a memorial forest near Jerusalem, producing a film, organizing the famous reunion in 1983 in Sciesopoli in the Italian Alps. No longer small, fearful children that survived the hell of the Shoah, but proud citizens of the State of Israel that you helped build.
Another big meeting in Avichail in 1984 when our father Moshe turned 70. You organized then: ‘this is your life’.
A year later in ‘Masuah’ there was another grand meeting to celebrate the publication of the book “The Voyage of the Children to the Promised Land’ By A. Megged. Worked on the translation and publication in Italian, and English. Production of a memorial book ‘To their memory’ in 1988 a year after our father died, to his memory and others from Selvino who passed away.
On a more personal vein – you were gave help and support during our father’s illness.
2 big projects that required great effort were the twinning of Selvino To Ze’elim. This was recently renewed by the NGO that was recently formed. The great photographic exhibition in ‘Masuah’. This exhibition was displayed for many years and became an educational source to many high school children. You fought to keep it in the public eye and indeed it was exhibited later at Yad Vashem in a great ceremony.

On that occasion I said:
” To Olek with great appreciation,
There is no one more suited to hold the Selvino symbol. The hours and days months and years that you have worked on the subject, ran around organizing, and didn’t give up ever. Setbacks you overcame and always with a feeling of a mission to pass on the exhibition, and preserve it for generation to come.
Congratulations from the Zeiri clan.”
Olek, I hope that in the last years when you were a bit cut out of the activities, but hope you knew, and will know in the eternal life, of all these extensive activities of the Selvino Children NGO.
We promise to continue on your road, never to give up, not to fear difficulties and to keep the story of your generation and Selvino forever.
To Sarah and the family – your pain is ours. Keep these many memories of a man that was always ‘doing’ keep his values and the hope he lived with, and find appropriate memorial to his life.

I will only quote from a poem:
If we meet with the warmth of their heart – we will extinguish the fire
Will cool the heat that drips from their hand – we will leave them alone.
(Avraham Khalfi)

Go on your way, friend ‘will your memory be blessed’ (a common Hebrew blessing)
Tali Zeiri Amitai


We dedicate to Olek Sarel some verses from the Warsaw ghetto poet, Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch:

And now, Olek, my child,
turn off your childhood joy,
the bright silver river of your laugh,
now we are ready for the unknown road.

Do not raise your big eyes
towards me so curiously,
and do not ask why and for what
we have to leave our home.

And in an hour favorable,
the miracle of rebirth repeats itself again,
and once again spring is here.


We recall that one day in August 1983 about seventy former Children of Selvino went on a journey, to Italy, to visit the place where they had regained their childhood in 1945-1948, and to inaugurate a memorial plaque.
Promoters of the initiative were two of Selvino’s first guests: Olek Sarel and Moshe Barnea (Buchko).

The daughter of Alex Czoban-Sarel, Dorit, then eighteen, born in Tel Aviv, accompanied her father on the journey to Selvino in August 1983.
He spent those three days observing exciting scenes, the meeting of his father and his friends with their childhood. He sat with them at the dining table, and during the Shabbat Eve celebrations he sang with them, slept in one of the beds they had used as children, roamed the rooms and the backyard of the house. Concerned, curious and moved, she listened to their conversations and their memories, in the morning, at noon and in the evening, making sure not to skip a meeting, a walk, a ceremony.
“Since I was a child I was attracted to books about the Holocaust, to children at the time of the Shoah. I read them in a state of tension, curiosity and emotion.
How to explain my passion, because my parents did not encourage me to read those books, and none of my friends were interested in it. Perhaps it was the desire to know my ‘roots’ …
“The school did not teach me much in this respect, of course, we also studied the Diaspora in Jewish history, but it was all very abstract: anti-Semitism,
discrimination, persecutions, etc. From the stories of Shalom Aleichem and others I glimpsed a picture of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, but it was like a legend
distant, hundreds of years ago, as if they were talking about other people, without any relationship to Israel. It was difficult to identify with persecuted Jews who lived among the Gentiles. And then, the Shoah … We were studying it, of course, but also like another chapter in Jewish history, and it was hard to realize what had really happened. They never invited anyone who really was living to our school to tell us about their experiences. The ‘Shoah Day’ was nothing special. Well, yes, last year they took us to a memorial service in the Mann Auditorium, but it was a shameful thing: hundreds of seventeen year olds from all the schools in Tel Aviv, a big noise, laughter, jokes …
“I went to Selvino, it was not my father who asked me to go there, it was my initiative, and there … for the first time I really lived the Holocaust, I was deeply moved, overwhelmed by emotion. tears: what had happened to those people when they were children, before Selvino, then in Selvino, became real, close.
“I can not understand, I’m not sure, no, some things can not be understood, where did they find the strength, those children, where did they find the strength to endure all those
sufferings, to face the horrors and death, for years, day by day, every moment? Here, now, an eight or ten year old child worries about a cut
In a finger …
“This force passes from parents to children, I doubt it, but I have the feeling that we need it … What has happened in Europe can happen anywhere, anytime I hope we will have the strength to endure such difficult experiences, as my father and mother. ”
Maybe we need to stop here, otherwise it’s too long? Just a thought.

On a Friday afternoon they left by bus from Milan, went from Bergamo and took the steep and winding mountain road to Selvino. At the same time, Annamaria Torriani, the widow of Luigi Gorini, came from Boston.
Selvino is no longer a small village. After so many years, it has become a tourist town, crowded with vacationers during the summer months, with hotels, restaurants and shops of all kinds along the main road.
To the east of the town, somehow separated from it, there is the house. Its appearance is almost unchanged: the wide curved staircase leading to the entrance, the round balcony of the second floor, the green shutters; the exterior walls painted in white and ocher. Only the “Sciesopoli” sign has been removed, replaced by another one which states that the house now serves as a holiday colony for needy children in Milan.And, in front of the house, the courtyard, the gate, the tuie, the cypress trees, the firs, the path that leads to the dense grove of pines and oaks.
Waiting for the guests were the director of the house, Dr. Baldi, the staff, representatives of the Municipality, photographers and journalists from Bergamo and Milan who had been informed of the event.
When visitors entered the atrium – moved to review the place where they had walked, played and studied as children, just escaped the valley of the
shadows of death – silence fell, and for a long moment everyone remained motionless. Then, suddenly, you do not know how, someone began to sing an old song of the pioneers, and immediately everyone took arm in arm, formed a circle and unleashed in a frantic hora, dancing, jumping, singing all the old songs, passing from one refrain to another in an ecstatic crescendo.
Those who were watching had eyes full of tears. Annamaria Torriani burst into tears on Moshe Ze’iri’s shoulder. He himself could not hold back the tears. Tzippora Hegger – now Levite – whispered to her friends: “I feel all tingling inside …”
Yannek, Abek, Olek, Indusha, Bronka, Sarka shivered.
The Italian women who worked in the house, dressed in white, the journalists and photographers, the inhabitants of Selvino were all amazed, taken by the general excitement that flowed like electricity from one to another. Some time passed before journalists managed to take notes and photographers took photographs.
On the wall hung a panel with the emblem of the spikes, the book and the scythe, and the words “House of Aliyà juvenile, Selvino – Italy”, in colorful Hebrew letters, a gift prepared by the children of the town for their Israeli guests .

Alessandro, the caretaker of the house, a man of about fifty who looked like the good old Geppetto, the “father” of Pinocchio, approached Dov, asking him all excited: “Do you remember when we played football here in the yard? ”

In the evening, around the tables laid out covered with white tablecloths – just the same tables – the eve of Shabbat is celebrated, just as it once was.
Candles light up. Bialik songs and hymns are sung that Ya’acov Hollander (Yannek) accompanies with the accordion.
Moshe pronounces the blessing on the wine and on the challà. Recitation of the prophetic passage of the week from the book of Isaiah: “Oh, afflicted, beaten by the storm, disconsolate …” (54:11). There are still songs and prayers.
All appear overwhelmed by emotion; many can not hold back the tears.

“Here”, whispers Olek Sarel, “here for the first time since the war we returned to feel the human warmth … For the first time …”

Then greetings, speeches, exchanges of signs and flags.
Alex Czoban-Sarel, now employed in the Israeli aviation industry, presented certificates of gratitude to the representatives of the Municipality, the Jewish community of Milan, the Joint Distribution Committee and Annamaria Torriani-Gorini.
Shmuel Shulman-Shilo, the “rebel” of the past, now a member of Tzeelim, a film actor, and teacher of drama at the kibbutz Institute, presented certificates and insignia in the name of his kibbutz to the mayor and announced the establishment of a twinning between Tzeelim and Selvino.
Finally Annamaria, the widow of Luigi Gorini, pronounced the words of thanksgiving. Annamaria had never forgotten those three years, so that her ties with the “Children of Selvino” had never been interrupted….”
(Aharon Megged, “The Journey to the Promised Land.” The History of the Children of Selvino “, Milan, Mazzotta, 1997, pp. 156 et seq.)


Translate »