To Be Remembered Forever!!! For My Little Friend

Israel Shapira was born in Radomsko, Poland in 1936 to Devorah (Dora) (née Hartman) and Shmuel Shapira.

His mother was deported to the camps. His father obtained Aryan documents for him and passed him into the care of a Christian woman, Jelka Podworski, who looked after Israel as if he were her own son.

After the war, Israel returned to Radomsko where he was adopted by the Farber family. He moved with the family to Italy. The Farber family then immigrated to America and Israel was put into a children's home in Selvino that was run on a volunteer basis by soldiers of the Jewish Brigade.

Israel relates that there was an air of quiet among the children, resulting from the difficulty in talking about their experiences, and therefore they expressed themselves primarily through drawing. Because of his poor health, he immigrated to Eretz Israel (Mandatory Palestine) in November 1945 together with a group of sick children who had been with him in Selvino. Among the members of the group was Shlomo Schwartz, an older child who dedicated "Nach Treblinka" to Israel, a drawing depicting the deportation to Treblinka, on the reverse of which is a dedication; "To Be Remembered Forever!!! For my little friend, from me, Shlomo Schwartz."

After arriving in Eretz Israel, he was reunited with his mother who had survived Ravensbrück concentration camp.

On 1 June 2011 Israel came to a collection day in Neve Ya'akov and gave Yad Vashem the drawing that had been dedicated to him in 1945.