Gabriel Koren photograph collection

Gabriel Koren was born Gabriel Korn (nicknamed Gabby) was born on born on October 25, 1941 in Przemyśl, Poland to Lejb Abraham Korn and Gitl Rappaport Korn. His father was a Zionist social activist and his mother was a teacher in a gymnasium. Gabriel’s maternal aunt, Lusia Lea Rappaport Friedman immigrated to Palestine in 1938.

In the Przemyśl ghetto the family hid in a bunker together with extended family to avoid deportation. Gabriel’s Polish nanny arranged a hiding place for him in a local convent. In May 1943, when Gabriel was 18 months old, he was put in the convent. His parents wrote their last will and testament in which they disposed of their property in which one third would go to the convent and the rest was for Gabriel’s education to become a rabbi in a Jewish state. Gabriel’s family in hiding were denounced and deported to Auschwitz June 17, 1943. Immediately after liberation in July 1944, the convent transferred the Jewish children, including Gabriel, to a Jewish orphanage in Przemyśl. Circa 1946, Bela and Henek Mandel, who had been neighbors of the Korn family before the war, adopted Gabriel. Their own child had been murdered, but they survived imprisonment in Płaszów by being on Oscar Schindler’s list.

In December 1948, the Mandels together with Gabriel immigrated to Israel. A distant relative, who survived the Holocaust and knew both the Mandels and Lusia Rappaport, told Lusia about Gabriel’s existence, and that he had been adopted by the Mandels. Lusia then claimed him, and settled with him at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai in the south of Israel.