Posted on 04/24/25
Jerusalem, Israel - April 24, 2025 - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Thursday, 24 April 2025) [translated from Hebrew]:
"In 1933, my late father-in-law, Shmuel Ben-Artzi, then Shmuel Hahn, left his hometown of Biłgoraj, and via Warsaw, immigrated to the Land of Israel. His father Moshe accompanied him along the way and tried to persuade him in every way not to immigrate to the Land of Israel.
He tried to persuade him by using some of the values he learned at home, which he really loved. He also told him: 'You have nothing over there. What will you do there? Look at what’s right here.'
Shmuel was very conflicted, because on the one Hahnd he really loved his father and his brothers and sisters, especially his twin sister Yehudit. But on the other Hahnd, he wanted with all his heart to be a pioneer in the Land of Israel and also a pioneer of the Novardok Yeshiva, an elite unit. He would build the foundation in Bnei Brak.
In the end, he decided to go. He worked in an orchard for eight years. Later, he became an educator, and one who left his mark on many generations, including people who passed through the Knesset as well as those in the media who also talked about him. “The educator” - that's how they called him. He was also a Bible scholar. Ben-Gurion invited him to the first Bible class he organized. I think Shmuel was the only one in the country who received medals from both the Irgun and the Haganah. He married his wife, Chava, and they had three sons and a daughter, my wife Sara, as well as twelve grandchildren and additional great-grandchildren.
Shmuel was also a poet. He received the Ka-Tzetnik Prize for Holocaust literature. He used to send part of his salary that he earned in the orchard to his family in Poland. But when the war broke out, the correspondence ended, and he understood very quickly that something terrible was happening. He expressed this in several moving poems expressing longing but mostly despair.
I want to read you an excerpt from one of the poems called "To Europe, a poem":
"My eyes are immersed in a river of sorrow,
a tear has fallen because of this grief!
They drown my people in blood,
and my L-rd is silent…
Like a stone in a field,
I too will be silent before the crescent moon.
From Europe, left the Torah,
And from Germany, the creed;
Killed and strangled, murdered and slaughtered!
For the ‘Jude’ a bullet’s a waste —
Only poisonous gas in a closed trailer,
And with no spare time —
Buried him alive!
G-d, justice, the sanctity of human life.
Ha-ha-ha mocks man,
Long live genocide.
In this genocide, my father-in-law's entire family from Biłgoraj and Tarnogród in Poland perished.
I will read their names: the father, my wife's grandfather, Moshe Hahn; his wife, Itta Hahn; Shmuel's twin sister, Yehudit Hahn, age 24.
Shmuel passed away at the age of 97 but throughout his entire life, even during the last days before he passed away, whenever I mentioned Yehudit's name he would cry. He always cried.
Shmuel's brothers: Meir Dov Hahn, age 18; Shimon Tzvi Hahn, age 16; Arye Leiv Hahn, age 13; and his younger sister, Fasalah Hahn, age 10.
Additional family members from Biłgoraj: Uncle Avraham Tauber, his wife, son and daughter; Aunt Rachel Tauber, her three sons, Avraham, Yaakov and Shlomo, their wives and all their children; Aunt Hendel, her husband and children; Aunt Felda and both her daughters.
From Tarnogród: My wife's great- grandfather, Zeev-Wolf Hahn; Shmuel's aunt, Matal Kneigstein, the daughter of Zeev Hahn; her eldest daughter and son, Hillel Ben Yehezkel; Uncle Mendel Hahn, his wife and their two kids.
May their memory be a blessing.
May G-d avenge their blood."
