Reserve your Visit
Online Store
Support Us
Arie Durst lit one of six torches at the State Opening Ceremony of Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem in 2025.
Arie Durst
Arie Durst
Arie (Leopold) Durst was born in 1933 in Lwów, Poland (today Ukraine). His brother Marian was born in 1939, the same year Lwów was occupied by the Soviet Union.
In 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, occupying Lwów. In the wake of the German occupation, many family members came to live with the Dursts. Arie’s father was drafted as a doctor in the Red Army. His uncle, Marek Mayer, obtained an essential worker’s permit, protecting him from German persecution.
During the Aktionen, Arie and his mother would hide in the potato and coal cellar in the home of Kasia, a non-Jewish woman who had previously been Arie’s nanny. Marian, Arie’s younger brother, lived under an assumed identity with Marek Mayer, posing as his child since he couldn’t be expected to keep quiet in hiding at such a young age.
In one of the Aktionen, Marian Durst was taken and murdered, as were all the members of the Mayer family apart from Marek himself. Arie’s mother Salomea obtained forged papers for herself and Arie and arranged to move to Warsaw. She hired the services of a Pole to accompany them, as a mother and son traveling alone would raise suspicion. Once in Warsaw, Salomea rented a room in the apartment of a French widow, who told all inquirers that her tenants were Polish Catholics. Bringing Arie up as a Catholic, the widow took him to church every Sunday and taught him the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
When another tenant had a run-in with the police and policemen came to the building, the doorkeeper managed to delay their entry, and Arie and his mother succeeded in escaping. The Warsaw Uprising broke out the same day, 1 August 1944. Arie and Salomea hid, but they were caught by the Germans after some four weeks and deported to the Pruszków labor camp. Escaping from the moving train, they reached the town of Leśna Góra, where Arie made a living as a peddler until liberation.
At the war’s end, Arie and Salomea began their search for Arie’s father. They discovered that he had survived the war in the ranks of Anders’ Army and was in Tel Aviv. He obtained certificates—entry permits to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine)—for his wife and son, and the family was reunited in 1945. Arie did not know how to read or write, but he started going to school, studied diligently, and eventually joined the academic officers’ medical program. He served as a doctor in the Golani brigade of the IDF and was awarded a citation for performing an impromptu operation under fire. He established Israel’s first transplant unit and was Head of Surgery at Hadassah Hospital.
Arie inspired the establishment of the Adi organization for organ donation in Israel, and he worked tirelessly to increase awareness regarding the importance of organ donation. He initiated new techniques and procedures in surgery, as well as in the treatment of wounded and cancer patients. He was a senior surgeon and a company commander, and was one of the founders of the IDF medical corps field hospitals.
Arie and Rimona have three children and eight grandchildren.