reprinted from Teaching From Zion Magazine - Volume 30 - October 2013 - Netivyah Bible Instruction Ministry
In the Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, which the Yad Vashem Institute published in 2007, our brother Amfian Gerasimov was introduced as follows;
“Amfian Gerasimov is a holy man of his own invention. He was fourteen when the Communists overthrew the Tsars in his native Riga, and ever since he has been searching for the God the Communists outlawed. His sparse, immaculate apartment in Talpiot, a Jerusalem Suburb, with its pictures of King David, could belong to a monk; he possesses the detachment of those who dwell in the life of the spirit. Speaking in Byelorussian, he resists answering questions directly, preferring instead to quote from the well-worn Bible that never leaves his hands. “Judaism and Christianity have one book and I live according to it,” he says. (Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem Publications, 2007.)
Following is part of Amfian Gerasimov’s interview with the Yad Vashem Institute:
“I was born in Riga in 1902. My mother was very religious, my father was a laborer and an alcoholic. Seven of their children before me had died because of him, so everyone was sure I would die too. When I was fourteen, I witnessed the Russian Revolution and I wondered why Communists hated religion and how atheism in the Soviet Union came to be. I was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church, but I soon began studying all faiths. I was searching for a religion that would give me the security I hadn’t found in my family.
There were Jews in Riga, but I had no contact with them. The first contact I had was with Judaism, not with Jews. In 1925 when I began studying all religions, I learned about Judaism as well. I learned that both Judaism and Christianity have one book, the Bible and I live according to it. In 1928, I married and had six children. I didn’t really want to marry, but my mother had died and I didn’t know how to cook. My wife was also seeking the truth. I read all the books about atheism and I didn’t find the truth in them so I turned to religion.
The first Jew I met was my landlady, Mrs. Brill. She was a different class from my family. I was a poor mailman, but in 1941 the ‘rich’ people were suddenly our equals and we had the chance to play a part in their lives. Mrs. Brill had disappeared from our building, which was on the island near Riga, but soon her two daughters, Lila and Dora, who each had a husband and two daughters, took the apartment above ours. So there were two families occupying the same space. My family occupied one floor below. Life for me and my family was not easy. However, the lives of our new neighbors were much worse. My wife and I discovered that the Germans had evicted the Brill sisters and their families from the large apartments in which they had lived in the center of town.
In a few months the Germans had ordered them to move into the suburb where they had congregated all of the city’s Jews into a ghetto of only six or seven small streets, an area of two square kilometers. When the families left, they asked us to keep a few suitcases from which they would want us to deliver packages to them from time to time. At first, before the barbed wire went up, my children delivered packages to them. Later I had to make complicated arrangements to meet them, always wearing my postman’s uniform and carrying their packages in my pouch. These poor people were moved constantly, and when they could get messages to me, I met them wherever they told me.
For several months we had a plan to meet when they were returning to the ghetto, heavily guarded, after a day of work. One of the armed guards cooperated for a bribe by giving me a hand signal when the time was best. During these meetings we would hand them the packages, listen to the stories of daily experiences, exchange news between us and determine what to bring in the next package. One tragic night the Nazis did not allow Dora Brill and her two daughters to return to the ghetto, but instead took them outside the city together with the old, the sick and the children, and murdered them without mercy.
I continued to meet with Lila Brill and her husband, Isaak Mizroch, and her two daughters until Isaak was deported and executed. On one of these meetings I was stopped by the Germans for questioning. This was a frightening experience, but I managed to convince them that I was simply a postman delivering a package.
One of Lila’s daughters, Evta (Yvette), had married Harry Niss, whom I was soon to meet and hide in my home. By that time, my wife and our children had gone to the country for safety and I was living at home alone. The front was nearing, and after only a few days, Harry was able to leave and join the approaching Russian army.
A few months after the Germans were expelled, I received a telegram from Evta in Poland, asking me about Harry’s fate. When I wrote to say he was alive she quickly came to Riga and told me how she and her mother Lila, and her sister Evi, had been liberated from the Germans by the English. A short time later they all left for Haifa. I received letters from them, telling me that Harry had been killed in a work accident and Evta had remarried and moved to Canada. The letters stopped in 1950.
Many years later I started going to synagogue and decided to convert to Judaism. I had myself circumcised at the age of sixty-eight and managed to get an invitation to immigrate to Israel. But the Soviet Union wouldn’t allow me to go without my wife, and she didn’t want to go. The only way was for us to get a divorce. When I went before the judge, he said, ‘You already have white hair. Its already time for you to die, not to get divorced. What do you need a divorce for?’ I told him, ‘I don’t need a divorce; the government needs a divorce.’ I finally got the permit to immigrate to Israel, and in 1975, we came to Israel, accompanied by one of my sons. When we arrived here, we found out that Lila lived in Tel Aviv. I visited this elderly mother – she’s my age – several times, and she was very glad to see me. She was sick and almost blind, but she had maintained herself well and was full of memories of the past. But discussions of a moral or spiritual topic did not interest her. When I told her that the suffering of the Jewish people was a consequence of their deviation from the morals of the Torah, she seemed bored and tended to fall asleep, I find this a typical response of Jews when I mention the case of their suffering. In this way I think the prophecy of the prophet Jeremiah is being fulfilled [Jeremiah 6:10]: ‘Behold their ears are closed and they are not able to hear.’
I began going to synagogue every day after I arrived in Israel because I wanted to be accepted, but apparently it wasn’t enough. Many of the people did not like the ideas I expressed and they started asking me if I was Jewish or Russian, and if I believed in Jesus. I told them that I am Jewish and I do believe in Jesus, and they asked me why. I showed them the Old Testament, where it says that a Messiah will come and die for the sins of all people, and that’s what Jesus did. Then I got threats on my telephone for three years, every night, until I finally notified the police and they were able to stop it.
I was awarded the Yad Vashem medal, and many people have asked me why I helped the Jews when the risk was so great. I answer them by quoting the Bible, the New Testament, John, Chapter 15: ‘There is no great love than sacrificing your own soul for another’s soul.’ And of course, this passage comes directly from the Old Testament, Proverbs, Chapter 24.”
Amfian, Gavriel his son and family have been associated with Netivyah and with our congregation since they immigrated to Israel in 1975. In May 2011, Zvi from Roeh Israel Congregation and I, drove to Petah Tikvah to interview Gavriel.
Amfian was a very faithful member of our congregation in Jerusalem. In fact he said once that after looking and investigating more than 20 religious groups he had finally found what he was looking for all through the years at Netivyah. He found in Netivyah, at that time, a congregation of Jews who were committed to the Restoration of the First Century community of Yeshua’s Disciples and to the principles of the Word of God as they are seen through the eyes of the Apostles in the New Testament. On a particular Sunday when Jerusalem was covered with thick snow, Amfian walked from his apartment in Talpiot (a Jerusalem neighborhood about 2.5 miles from our congregation) to the congregation. In Jerusalem, when it snows seriously there is no transportation, people don’t go to work, and everything halts. Amfian was the only one that walked that Sunday afternoon to come and worship and we were only a congregation of two on that Sunday afternoon.
Amfian did not know Hebrew, but he hired a private interpreter to come with him to the congregation every service to interpret for him in Russian. He did not miss a single prayer meeting or service in which the congregation gathered to praise and worship and learn the Word of God.
Gavriel, Amfian’s son is also a Righteous from Among the Nations (חסיד אומות העולם) in his own right. When Gavriel was 14 years old, Amfian would send him into the Ghetto with packages and money to deliver to the leadership of the Jews. It was a dangerous task that only a young boy could carry out without being caught by the Nazi guards. Gavriel also told us about a summer cottage that Amfian had in the forest outside of Riga, Latvia. In that cottage Amfian kept and fed four Jewish families with their children for many months. He fed them and cared for them and helped them escape the Nazi Holocaust. Latvians were ever more cruel to the Jews than their German occupiers.
There are not many Righteous from Among the Nations that are living today. Amfian and his family are the only ones that we had the privilege to know personally. The most impressive thing about this family, who sacrificed and endangered their lives in order to save Jews, is their humility and simplicity. It is this humility and simplicity that enhanced their deep faith in God and in Yeshua the Messiah and gave them the strength to do what they did for the Jews during the Holocaust and the German occupation of Riga, Latvia. It is this same humility and simplicity that keeps them faithful and dedicated to do the will of the Lord and continue to serve the Kingdom of God and the Jewish people.
Amfian passed away in the late 1990’s and is buried in Jerusalem. Gavriel is living in Petah Tikva not far from Tel- Aviv. Gavriel is well into his 80’s and still doing volunteer work for the community and the Jewish people. He is a master carpenter and it is his hobby to build wonderfully beautiful cases for Torah Scrolls and give them to the Sephardic Synagogues. He is also building an extra room for his home and he is doing it alone, from mixing the cement to crafting the woodwork. He is a man that is nearing 90 years of age and is not idle, continuing to work physically every day.
It is the privilege of our congregation in Jerusalem to have known Amfian Gerasimov and to have Gavriel associated and in fellowship with us. When I asked Gavriel what motivated him and his family to endanger their lives and sacrifice for a few Jewish people during the Holocaust, Gavriel’s answer was very simple, “It was the desire of our Lord to bless the Jewish people, and that is all that we could do for them at that time.”
It is so refreshing and faith strengthening for the younger generation of our congregation and of Netivyah to remember Amfian Gerasimov. When I ask our young leaders what they remember of Amfian Gerasimov their faces light up with joy and say, “Sure! He is the old man that every week gave us a candy!”
In 1990, I had the privilege to visit the former Soviet Union before its demise. I visited Riga, Latvia, and visited Amfian’s brothers and sisters who were still living there.
This amazing family were all doing well economically, but they were also walking with the Lord and active in their relationship with the disciples of Yeshua in Riga and still connected and seeking ways to be a blessing to the small post war Jewish Community in Riga. They were all faithful disciples of Yeshua. They survived the communist regime. They have raised second and third generations of Disciples of Yeshua despite the hard years of communism in the USSR. The secret of their happiness is very simple - they really believe the Word of God and are not sidetracked with the teachings of traditional Christianity. They were committed to the Restoration of the New Testament Church without “whys” and “buts” - just simply seeking to do the will of God. Not one of them said that it was an easy journey, but everyone said that it was the only way to know for sure that they are doing what pleased God. This is what Gavriel still says is his own model for living faithfully doing the will of God.
You can read and research more about Amfian Gerasimov’s experience by following this link to Yad Vashem: https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/righteous/4014992
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