Mayer Wolf Racker
Mayer Wolf Racker was born on December 29, 1922, to Mindel and Yidel Racker in Gorlice, Poland. He had an older sister, Rachel (1920), a younger brother, Yecheskel (1924), and a younger sister, Rivke (1926). He grew up playing soccer, going to summer camp, and delighting in all the milestones of a Jewish childhood in Poland. His observant family celebrated Shabbat and holidays together. He recalled the local green grocer going from family to family with a fruit they had never eaten before, so that when they said Shehecheyanu it would truly involve a new food. One of the fruits he tasted for the first time on Rosh Hashanah was pineapple.
His community also supported the local yeshiva where young men studied to become rabbis. As a young child, a rabbinic student would come to his home each morning, helping him recite morning prayers and accompanying him to school. The student assisted him with dressing while reciting Modeh Ani, with every word connected to a particular motion. For example, Modeh would be linked to putting an arm into the sleeve of a shirt, and then Ani with the second sleeve. Life was good and Mayer was a happy and fun-loving boy.
His ife, like so many others, took a tragic turn with the rise of Nazism. But incredibly, Mayer survived eight concentration camps and three death marches. After the war, many survivors sought to return to their hometowns to find surviving family members. Mayer learned that none of his immediate family had survived. He and two cousins reunited, becoming the only living remnants of a large family.
In the aftermath of the war, Mayer spent several years, mostly in Italy, working with the underground in the effort to create the State of Israel. One of his primary roles was to obtain and smuggle arms used in the Zionist cause. He and his team traveled extensively through post-war Europe on this mission. He told his family of one harrowing night they spent in jail in Greece. A police officer had heard them speaking Yiddish and thought they were Nazis attempting an escape and threatened them with death. Imagine the irony of surviving the Nazi atrocities and then being arrested and possibly shot in the mistaken belief that he was a Nazi himself. The following morning, a captain was called to the scene, understood their predicament and immediately released them. Mayer was also tasked with renting small fishing boats on the coast of Italy. At night, he and members of the underground traveled to Cyprus carrying arms, which were then dismantled to make smaller packages to be hidden in caves. Under the cover of darkness, Mayer made many trips from Cyprus to the coast of Israel, where the packages were floated to the shore. These risky, heroic efforts helped Israeli pioneers prepare for the coming War of Independence.
After several years, a distant relative in Chicago was able to send a student visa to Mayer. The visa came with his last name cut off, so that his full name became Mayer Wolf. He traveled by cargo ship to New York where to his surprise he was met by a “landsman” who had been sent to pick him up as a Shabbat guest before he headed off to Chicago. The “landsman,” who would later become Mayer’s father-in-law, had received word that someone from his hometown needed a place to stay for Shabbat before heading to Chicago. It was on that Shabbat that Mayer met his future wife, Hilda. He then traveled to Chicago where he became a student, but eventually returned to New York, opening a grocery store in Brooklyn with a friend from the concentration camp, marrying Hilda and starting a family, which consisted of two daughters, Judy and Idie. Mayer is the father of Heschel Early Childhood Head Judy Wolf-Nevid and grandfather of Heschel alums Michael Zev Nevd and Daniella Rose Nevid.
Mayer's life was a testament to the power of courage, faith, and resilience. His memory is a constant reminder that no challenge is too difficult to overcome and that injustice and discrimination should never be tolerated. People often asked him about his upbeat nature and optimistic outlook given his life circumstances. He always had the same response, "The worst that could happen to me in life already happened, and I started over, so I know that anyone can do anything."
