An email sent by my beloved friend R' Zevi Reinitz and printed with permission:

I know how much you love a great story... so I thought I would share a brief one about Rabbi Leo Goldman z"l, an old European Rav I knew from Detroit who passed away a couple of weeks ago.

 

Rabbi Goldman was a neighbor of ours in Detroit and for as long as we lived in Detroit, we davened virtually every leil Shabbos and Shabbos afternoon in the minyan that he maintained in his modest home.

Rabbi Goldman was one of the warmest, kindest individuals I have ever met. Growing up, it was hard not to notice the kindness and warmth he showed everyone, particularly children. Even as a young boy, he showed me personally an unusual level of consideration, respect and kindness. He loved when we were involved in the minyan and it was in his shteibel that I had my first taste of being a shaliach tzibbur - often serving as chazzan for Kabbalos Shabbos and Mincha/Ma'ariv. He was always quick with a smile, pat on the cheek and a kind word of encouragement.

A few years ago, I read the following story about Rabbi Goldman from which I saw that I was not the first young Jewish child to be inspired by his warmth:

On Sept. 30, 1945, inside the near-ruin that once was the Great Shul of Vilna, Lithuania, Rabbi Goldman, then a Russian army officer in his 20s, approached a father holding his 5-year-old son.

It was Simchat Torah and, in a city that once called itself home to 100,000 Jews, of which 3,000 survived, the shul has been stripped of almost everything, including the Torahs.

Rabbi Goldman asked if the boy were Jewish, then said, “During the war, I traveled many kilometers as a soldier, and I did not see many Jewish children alive. May I take him as my Sefer Torah?”

In place of dancing while holding the Torah, the soldier danced while hoisting the boy who, to everyone in the sanctuary, represented the rebirth of the Jewish people.

Although they parted ways after that day, the experience had a huge impact on both their lives. Rabbi Goldman would devote his life to teaching and comforting the Jewish people. And the boy, who had been hidden by a Polish nanny and raised Catholic until the end of the war, began his return to Yiddishkeit that day. Today, he is well-known as Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York City, who serves as a protector of the Jewish people and fighter against bigotry.

 

Although he never heard what happened to the boy, Rabbi Goldman’s memory of the story became the subject of a song, “The Man From Vilna,” which was written in 2004 after he met a Toronto songwriter on an airplane. The song turned out to be pivotal in reuniting the two survivors.

In 2007, Foxman shared his story with a group of Israeli soldiers and Birthright Israel participants at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel. Someone asked him if the soldier were still alive.

A woman who worked at Yad Vashem said she would do some research and find out. She found a story about the song in a Chabad-Lubavitch newspaper. Connections were made and, in January 2010, Foxman met Rabbi Goldman’s daughter Vivian Aronson in Indianapolis.

When she showed him a 1945 photo of her father as a Russian soldier, Foxman was overwhelmed.

On April 8, 2010, Foxman walked into Rabbi Goldman’s Oak Park home. The little boy and the Jewish soldier would be able to hold each other again.

(This is an excerpt from a longer article about Rabbi Goldman here: http://www.thejewishnews.com/a-life-of-kindness-and-torah)

 The song "The Man From Vilna" was written by Abie Rottenberg and can be heard here: http://viewpure.com/iEh_XxmekFo
MY NOTE: All men should not look at the screen from about the 44 second until the 50 second mark as there is an non-appropriately clad woman who appears on the screen somewhere during that time and also at towards the very end. A very moving video.