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(JTA) — David Leitner, probably the most well-known lovers of falafel in a rustic filled with them, has died at 93 in Israel, the nation that grew to become his house after he survived the Holocaust as a younger teen.
Leitner’s dying comes almost a decade after his ritual of consuming falafel to mark his survival broke into public view and was adopted by many in Israel and overseas.
Leitner fell in love with the chickpea fritters as quickly as he encountered them in Shuk Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem. The yr was 1949.
“The fried balls instantly took me again to the march — and my mom’s kitchen — and I had two parts one after one other,” Leitner instructed an Israeli information web site in 2018.
He was referring to the dying march that he and about 66,000 different prisoners of Auschwitz have been compelled to undertake in January 1945. A lot of the prisoners died, however Leitner, then simply 14, survived — a fortune he attributed to enthusiastic about his mom’s bilkalach, small golden buns of bread made in his native Hungary and throughout Central Europe.
David “Dugo” Leitner, left, meets Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to have falafel collectively in Jerusalem, Jan. 17, 2019. (Mark Neiman/GPO)
The expertise precipitated Leitner, who glided by the nickname Dugo, to make a dedication: He would eat falafel each Jan. 18, the date that the dying march started.
For many of his life, he undertook the ritual alone. “All these years, dad at all times went alone to have falafel to mark the day,” one in all his daughters instructed the Israeli web site, Srugim. “We knew Jan. 18 meant rather a lot to him and he wanted to be alone and have falafel and get in contact with himself.”
However over time, phrase received out concerning the unassuming man who noticed falafel as a logo of his survival. After his ritual reached the Testimony Home, a small Holocaust schooling establishment in Nir Galim, a moshav, or cooperative village, close to Ashdod whose founders embody Leitner and his spouse, Sarah, the establishment shared his story on social media.
By 2019, Leitner’s story was so well-known that Israeli President Reuven Rivlin invited him to have falafel on the president’s residence in Jerusalem. In 2021, Israel’s Overseas Ministry took what it termed “Dugo Day” overseas, providing free falafel at its embassies in Warsaw and London. Leitner’s inspiring story has been shared numerous instances on feel-good social media accounts, bringing his story and the falafel custom to audiences world wide.
Leitner died on Thursday, forsaking two daughters; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and a Jan. 18 ritual that’s anticipated to endure. It was Tisha B’Av, a quick day within the Jewish calendar, however some on social media declared that they’d make falafel their first meal in Leitner’s honor.
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