The Dog Who Remembered: How a Holocaust Survivor Rediscovered His Family’s Hidden Torah Scrolls

Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Salomon lost his entire family in the Holocaust. Soon after liberation, he returned to his hometown, Halmeu, only to find it reduced to rubble and not a single stone left standing.

He sat on one of the broken stones, weeping bitterly for the destruction and the loss. Through his tears, he lifted his voice in prayer: “Master of the Universe, if my father’s ancient Torah scrolls somehow survived the inferno and still exist somewhere nearby — please, help me find them!”

These were two very old Torah scrolls, written by a master scribe in extraordinarily beautiful script. Sitting on a cold stone, his face in his hands, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi wept and wept.

Then, suddenly, he heard intense barking. Looking up, he saw a dog running toward him — and his heart froze. It was the Salomon family’s dog, the same one that had guarded their flour and grain storehouses before the war. The dog drew close, and at once he recognized it — but something was strange. “The barking was unlike anything I’d ever heard before,” Rabbi Chaim Tzvi later recounted. “It was filled with howls — as though the dog was trying to tell me something.”

The Dog with a Message

The dog had always been fiercely loyal. Once, years earlier, when his infant daughter had fallen from her bed while he was away working in the store, the dog had run all the way to him, jumped up, placed its paws on him, and barked frantically. Understanding that something was wrong, he had followed it home and found his baby on the floor, bleeding — just in time to save her life.

Now, the dog did the same thing: it placed its paws on him, barked strangely, then ran forward, returned, ran again — clearly urging him to follow.

Realizing that the animal wanted to lead him somewhere, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi got up and began to follow. The dog broke into a run, darting swiftly through the outskirts of the ruined town, until they reached the edge of a wheat field.

The Hidden Treasure Beneath the Earth

There, the dog suddenly stopped — and began digging furiously at the ground. Rabbi Chaim Tzvi joined him, digging with his hands. He dug and dug — nothing. He was about to give up, but the dog refused to move, continuing to bark and claw at the earth.

Finally, at a depth of about two and a half meters, he heard a metallic clang echo from beneath the soil — the unmistakable sound of metal striking metal. His pulse raced. Digging further, he uncovered a large iron case buried deep underground.

“After much effort,” he recalled, “I finally lifted it out. Inside were two Torah scrolls, completely intact — perfect, untouched, as if newly given from Sinai!” He stood speechless, overcome with emotion. But the dog wasn’t done yet.

The Second Secret

Even after the Torah scrolls were found, the dog continued barking and digging. Thinking it was only restless, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi tried to leave — but the dog refused to let him go. He kept scratching and whining.

So he dug again. A few dozen centimeters deeper, he found another metal box, this one filled with bundles of banknotes — his late father’s hidden savings.

It became clear that on the night before the Nazis invaded Halmeu, his father, Rabbi Asher Zundel, realizing the fate that awaited the town’s Jews, had buried both the Torah scrolls and his savings deep in the earth. The family dog, who had followed him everywhere, witnessed where the treasures were hidden — and had waited all those years for someone from the family to return.

The moment Rabbi Chaim Tzvi came back, the dog knew what to do, and led him straight to the spot.

A Faithful Friend’s Final Act

From that day on, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi never parted from those Torah scrolls. Wherever he went, he carried them with him, guarding them as his most sacred possession.

The dog’s ending was just as remarkable. Having fulfilled its mission, the loyal animal refused to eat for a full week — and then passed away peacefully. It was as if the dog’s soul had waited only to deliver its final message — to bring light, faith, and memory back from the darkness.