The man she would marry was a student in 1933, first at the branch of the yeshiva in Hebron, then in Slabodka. Fortunately, the stay in Hebron meant that Rav Goldschmidt had a Palestinian passport, which enabled the young couple to move at the end of 1940 to what was then called Palestine.
Rebbetzin Goldschmidt learned how some of the Jews in Hebron, including her husband and his brother, had been saved from the Arab pogrom of 1929. Arabs carrying knives surrounded a house where a hundred people were hidden. The British police watched, but did nothing. The Arab owner of the house told the would-be attackers that they must adhere to their culture tradition of hospitality and not harm his guests. When the British police saw an Arab stopping Arabs, they began to shoot and the attackers fled.
But the pictures of handsome young men and beautiful young women on the walls of the rebbetzin’s apartment included relatives and friends who were not so fortunate and were murdered in Hebron or in Europe during World War II.
When the her granddaughter from Toronto arrived with her infant son for a visit, Rebbetzin Goldschmidt’s face lit up while she played with the laughing baby. In the hundred and fifty-six years between the birth of the Alter and the birth of this tiny new descendant, more than one enemy had tried to destroy our people. This great-great-great-grandson of the Alter will, God willing, grow up to make his contribution to the Jewish future.