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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Holocaust Chess Set Joins Pals They Survived Horror, Reunite At Memorial

Associated Press

Tiny, worn and faded, the pieces of a chess set carved in a Nazi internment camp have become the links that rejoined two boyhood friends separated a half-century ago.

With a crude kitchen knife, then 14-year-old Julius Druckman whittled the miniature chess set from a tree trunk for his friend, Menachem Scharf, shortly before they were forced to part in 1943.

The two Romanian Jewish boys had been interned in the Transnistria region, occupied by Nazi forces and their Romanian allies in neighboring Ukraine. The teenagers were among more than 150,000 Romanian Jews and suspected Communists imprisoned at the area’s labor camps, where thousands died from hunger and disease.

A half-century later, Druckman saw the memento on display at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, and tracked down his friend who, like him, had immigrated to Israel.

The two, both 68, were reunited last week.

“I heard this thick Romanian accent on the phone and was so excited to be speaking with him I actually hung up before remembering to invite him over,” Scharf said. “It’s like no time had passed - we had no problem reconnecting.”

On Wednesday, the two retirees with the gold-rimmed glasses sat side by side next to the chess set, on display in a glass case at the museum. They teased and interrupted one another.

“He was a better player,” insisted the shorter, more soft-spoken Druckman.

Scharf disagreed: “No, he was better technically.”

The young Druckman made the set about 7 inches by 8 inches and the pieces even smaller, chiseling the faces on the tiny horses and other details in exquisite precision.

The two boys met in the summer of 1942 when they were both interned in the Transnistria region, living in cellars and stealing and scouring for food together.

“We never forgot the golden rule - to help one another,” said Druckman.

Scharf remembered Druckman as a quiet and industrious boy who “always had some knife in his pocket.”

At some point in December 1943, Scharf was able to flee the area, while Druckman stayed behind. All together, about half of Romania’s 800,000 Jews died before the end of the war.