93-year-old Shalom Shtamberg, one of the Warsaw Ghetto’s last living survivors, was greeted with clapping and a bouquet of flowers when he arrived at a Haifa shul, wrapped himself in a tallis and read from a Sefer Torah in celebration of a belated bar mitzvah.

Eighty years ago, at age thirteen, he was thrown into the Warsaw Ghetto with his parents and five siblings, who all perished. He survived by training as an electrician and picking up other useful skills.

“I couldn’t celebrate [then] because the Nazi oppressor made it impossible,” he said. “Even before the war, there was a sort of atmosphere that no one could celebrate. There was terrible tension.”

The celebration was organized by Yad Ezer Le’chaver, an organization that provides social services and food to over a hundred Holocaust survivors.

{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}