Mendel Tessler - NNN 2021

Mr. Mendel Tessler comes from the northern Romanian village of Viseu-de-Sus. Coming from a religious home life, Mendel attended Cheder in addition to mandatory attendance in public school. Although the family discussed leaving the blatant anti-Semitism of the area, they did not leave in time and were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May, 1944. In Auschwitz, Mendel was separated from the rest of his family and became part of a group of nine hundred teenagers. He was given the job of collecting corpses. Of the nine hundred, five teens survived; one was Mendel. Mr. Tessler survived the war and built a family and successful business in the United States, always maintaining his betachon in Hashem. A full account of Mr. Tessler’s Holocaust story can be found in his riveting memoir, Witness: A Story of Survival and Triumph.