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Sunday, May 11, 2025
Holocaust survivor dies 2 weeks after great-grandson was killed in Gaza as she visited Bergen-Belsen
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleZev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
Two weeks after her IDF soldier great-grandson was killed fighting in northern Gaza, 96-year-old Holocaust survivor Magda Baratz died on Friday, it is announced.
On April 24, IDF reservist Master Sgt. (res.) Asaf Cafri was killed by sniper fire in the Beit Hanoun area of Gaza, in an attack that wounded three others.
At the time Cafri was killed, Baratz was attending a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she was honored as a survivor of the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen. She traveled there with her grandson Hagai, Cafri’s father.
Both only learned of Cafri’s death upon their arrival back in Israel, reports said.
Baratz died on Friday, leaving behind three children, 10 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, the family says.
She will be buried today at 5 p.m. at the Ganei Esther Cemetery in Rishon Lezion.
Cafri, a tank driver in the 14th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 79th Battalion, from Beit Hashmonai, was standing outside his tank when he and three others were shot, according to an initial IDF investigation.
The Times of Israel Community.