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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Israel "Izzy" Arbeiter watched as Jim Karpeichik illuminated the dank cellar with the light on his video camera. Arbeiter returned to his childhood home in Plock, Poland, on April 25, 2012, to look for the candlesticks he and his brother buried during World War II.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
The silver candlesticks given to Israel Arbeiter by his cousin, Rita Stulin.
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Left to right, the Arbeiter boys, Elek, Motek, Srulek (Israel's nickname growing up), Aron, and Josek.
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Icchak Arbeiter, the father of Israel Arbeiter.
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Israel Arbeiter's childhood home in Plock, Poland.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Israel Arbeiter's childhood home in Plock.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Israel Arbeiter's grandson, Matt Fritz (back right), and friend, Jon D'Allessandro (back left), worked with Arbeiter (front left) and Jim Karpeichik (front right) to gain access to the cellar where Arbeiter buried the candlesticks.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Fritz and D'Allessandro loosened stones that blocked a basement window.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Fritz helped Arbeiter squeeze through a small basement window.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter watches as Jim Karpeichik illuminated the cellar with the light on his video camera.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Matt Fritz, Arbeiter's grandson, began to dig through the debris in the basement of Arbeiter's childhood home.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
The group grew frustrated as they realized the candlesticks were no longer beneath the cellar floor.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Fritz, left, and D'Allesandro Arbeiter.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter sat dejectedly on the front steps of his childhood home in Plock, Poland, after he and his friends failed to recover the candlesticks.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter walked with Karpeichik down the long corridor where prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were marched. Arbeiter was a prisoner at Auschwitz in 1944.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Trees and green grass were visible through a disintegrating prisoner barrack.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter paused during a final visit to the concentration camp.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Bucolic fields and rolling hills surround the site of Nazi concentration and forced labor camps in the Reusten/Hailfingen/Tailfingen area of West Germany.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter visited the Hailfingen/Tailfingen memorial to the hundreds who died in the forced labor camp there.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
On the last day of his trip, Arbeiter spoke to a class of high school students in Rottenburg, Germany and told them about his life during the Holocaust.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
German high school student Tilman Schneider, 14, listened intently as Arbeiter told his life story.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Student Lucy Drenker, 17, listened during Arbeiter's presentation.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter had two long conversations with Walter Fischer (right), a former Hitler Youth volunteer.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Fischer went on to denounce his faith and his country after the war once he discovered the horrors of the Holocaust.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
"I do take every opportunity to teach our children about the past," Fischer said, but added "the short period of life I have ahead of me, I have to carefully determine how I must spend it."
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter was assisted by Jim Karpeichik as he walked the grounds at Treblinka, a death camp used by the Nazis to execute 900,000 Jews during the Holocaust.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
The sun disappeared behind the tall stand of trees that ringed the death camp in Treblinka.
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Dina Rudick / Globe Staff
Arbeiter recited the Jewish prayer of remembrance, the Kaddish, at Treblinka.




























