Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

New Jersey Man, 92, A Holocaust Survivor, Fulfills Dream Of Moving To Israel

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A 92-year-old New Jersey man fulfilled his dream of moving to Israel 71 years after he arrived in New York as a refugee from the Holocaust.

Jack Nasielski, of Edison, arrived Tuesday at Ben Gurion Airport on a Nefesh B’Nefesh aliyah flight in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah & Integration, the Jewish Agency, Keren Kayemeth Le’Israel and JNF-USA.

Nasielski, a native of Dessau, Germany, fled the Nazis as a child through Poland, eventually being captured and sent to four Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz. He was liberated from the Blachhamer camp in 1945.

He will live in the central Israel city of Rehovot near his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“Israel is the Jewish homeland. No one can persecute you for being a Jew in your own country,” Nasielski said upon arriving in Israel. “Today I am proud to be an Israeli and a real Jew. Israel is my new home and I love it.”

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.