Myron Mehlman has long made it a priority to feed others, so it came as no surprise that the 91-year-old Holocaust survivor donated $66,000 to Leket Israel, the country’s largest food rescue organization.
The donation will help Leket rescue and redistribute surplus food to feed more than 415,000 Israelis in need each week, including Holocaust survivors, at-risk youth and families experiencing food insecurity, according to a press release.
In 2021, Leket fed about 223,000 people in need, a number that has now increased 1.5 times due to the Israel-Hamas war and the resulting damage of Israel’s agricultural fields.
Mehlman personally presented his donation on Jan. 12 at his Montgomery County, Maryland, retirement home. Also in attendance were his daughter, Alison Fox, who helped arrange the meeting, grandson Jonathan Hurowitz and Carol Marcus, the associate director of development for American Friends of Leket Israel.
“I want to thank him for his generosity,” Marcus told Washington Jewish Week.
And she did, meeting Mehlman for the first time on Sunday and hearing his personal story.
Mehlman was born in Poland — in an area in modern-day Ukraine — in the early 1930s. Mehlman’s father had been a doctor, so local farmers would bring him “a lot” of fresh fruits as gifts or payment.
Before his town of Zalishchyky was conquered by the Germans in 1941, Mehlman, his younger sister and his mother fled east on a cattle train. During this time, the trains were regularly attacked and bombed, so he and his family members once survived in the woods for three weeks by foraging for nuts and berries.
“He grew up eating a lot of fresh food, fresh fruit, and there was never an issue of food insecurity,” Hurowitz said of his grandfather. “And so it was a big shock for him when he was a kid, being in a position where they had to scavenge for food on the way to Kazakhstan.”
The three made it to Almaty, Kazakhstan, which was then part of the Soviet Union, where they stayed for the remainder of World War II. Mehlman never saw his father again after boarding the train.
“When he arrived in Kazakhstan, food was scarce, and he was very blunt about the fact that he had to steal and barter,” Fox said.
Mehlman was once shot when he was caught trying to steal food from Russian military stockpiles to survive, Fox said: “He said what bothered him the most, which directly is related to what Leket does, is that [the Russian military would] rather have that food rot than give it out.”
Mehlman’s family members said they believe Leket Israel’s mission is especially meaningful to him because of his personal experience with food insecurity.
“He’s experienced extreme starvation and lack of food, especially in the context of war,” Fox said.
After World War II, the family returned to their home to find everything destroyed. Mehlman, his sister and their mom moved to a displaced persons camp in Germany, then in 1947, they took the SS Marine Marlin to New York City. They traveled by train to Dallas, where Mehlman attended high school and his first semester of college; he completed college in New York City.
Mehlman took nearly every opportunity to help those less fortunate than him, his family members said.
“One of the things I remember most vividly as a child was we would be walking around in New York and … I remember when anyone asked for money or food on the street, he would go into a restaurant and buy them food,” Fox recalled.
He had a tradition of buying hundreds of turkeys and distributing them to friends and “people all over” for Thanksgiving.
“He likes to feed people,” Fox said. “That’s just a passion of his. Whenever anyone was working at the house, he would always make food for them and buy them food. He gives prolifically to all sorts of organizations, including many Jewish ones.”
Mehlman’s kindness also extended beyond food: Despite his work as a toxicologist, which involves frequent animal testing, Fox said he did his best to ameliorate the use of animals and their suffering. Fox credits her father’s empathy as the reason she is vegan today: “He has a lot of empathy that runs deeply.”
From the 1980s to the 2000s, Mehlman served as an expert witness in various toxicology lawsuits, often without charging fees, and successfully advocated for legislation banning harmful chemicals.
Fox said her father’s No. 1 quality is his kindness, something he exhibits through his regular acts of tzedakah, or charitable giving. His donation to Leket Israel is meaningful given his childhood experiences fleeing his country amid World War II.
“Many of the people that we serve are elderly Holocaust survivors and survivors of the former Soviet Union,” Marcus said. “The number of people that fall into this category is decreasing with each passing year, but Leket has always been on the forefront of serving Holocaust survivors, so it brings the whole circle around.”
