By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

It is the month of Adar, and the arena was Kaunas, Lithuania. The same city once known to every Jew in the world as Kovno.

Between the two World Wars, Kovno was the capital of Lithuania and one of the great jewels of European Jewish civilization. The Jewish community numbered between 35,000 and 40,000 souls — roughly one-fourth of the city’s entire population — with tens of Jewish institutions, forty synagogues, institutions of higher Jewish learning, Yiddish and Hebrew schools, and a Jewish hospital. Most famously, it’s suburb across the bridge was home to the legendary Slobodka Yeshiva, one of the crown jewels of Lithuanian Torah scholarship, which sent its light across the entire Jewish world.

Kovno was alive. Kovno was learning. Kovno was singing. And then, in the summer of 1941, the sky fell.

On June 24, 1941, German forces occupied Kovno. Lithuanian nationals welcomed the German occupiers, seeing them as liberators from Soviet occupation. Local paramilitary groups — permeated with vicious antisemitism — blamed Jews for the Soviet repression of their country.

And the massacres began almost instantly.

Between June 24 and July 6, 1941, Nazis and Lithuanian partisans killed 7,800 Jews in Kovno alone. Jewish men were publicly tortured and beaten to death with iron bars in front of crowds that, witnesses reported, cheered. They cheered and the world had blackened part of its soul.

In early July 1941, German Einsatzgruppen detachments and their Lithuanian auxiliaries began systematic massacres of Jews in several of the forts around Kovno — fortifications that had been constructed under the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century. They shot thousands of Jewish men, women, and children, primarily at the infamous Ninth Fort.

Some 30,000 Jews were then herded into a sealed ghetto. What followed was a prolonged, methodical annihilation.

Then came the unspeakable. On March 27–28, 1944, some 1,600 children aged twelve or under — alongside many of their parents who attempted to intervene, and elderly people — approximately 2,500 people in total — were rounded up and murdered in the Kinder Aktion. Police cars roamed the ghetto streets and music was blared over loudspeakers to mute the terrified screams of families.

The final act came that summer. Three weeks before the Soviet army arrived in Kaunas, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground with grenades and dynamite. As many as 2,000 people burned to death or were shot while trying to escape the burning ghetto.

This was where the famed Rav Elchonon Wasserman was brutally murdered. He was one of the leading Torah scholars of pre-war Europe, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ohel Torah in Baranowitz, and a leading disciple of the Chofetz Chaim. His murder represented an incalculable loss to the Torah world.

Some forty odd years ago,  I had heard what had happened first-hand from a Rav Gantzfry who lived in Kew Gardens.  His son was, or still is a Rebbe in the Chasan Sofer Yeshiva. Before they were taken to the Seventh Fort to be killed, Rav Elchonon zt”l addressed those with him, telling them that they should consider themselves as korbanos (sacrifices) before the Ribbono Shel Olam, and that their deaths would be a kapparah (atonement) for Klal Yisrael. He urged them to have pure thoughts and to do teshuvah, so that they would be fitting sacrifices. He specifically said they should not think any improper thoughts that would render them “blemished” offerings.

He was shot at the Seventh Fort, one of a series of 19th-century military fortifications surrounding Kaunas that the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators used as mass execution sites during the early days of the German occupation of Lithuania in the summer of 1941.

His yahrtzeit is observed on the 11th of Tammuz.

And when the Red Army finally liberated the city, survivors returned to find a wasteland. Of forty thousand Jews, fewer than two thousand had survived. The Slobodka Yeshiva was gone. The forty synagogues were gone. A world of Torah, of learning, of life — erased.

The murderers believed it was over. They believed history had rendered its verdict on the Jews of Kovno.

They were wrong.

A Brief Digression

Muay Thai — “Thai Boxing,” the national sport of Thailand — is known as the Art of Eight Limbs, because its practitioners wield fists, elbows, knees, and shins as simultaneous weapons, combining them with clinching techniques that make the human body a complete fighting instrument. In the early kingdoms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, soldiers turned to their own bodies when weapons failed — fists, elbows, knees, and shins became their armor. This art of “fighting with many limbs,” known as Pahuyuth, laid the foundation for Muaythai

Today Muay Thai is practiced in 158 countries. And in Israel, it has produced warriors of extraordinary caliber — none more remarkable, at this moment, than a nineteen-year-old young man who carries the Name of Hashem into the ring.

His name alone is a statement of faith. Ahavat Hashem — Love of G-d — and he carries it not as a burden but as a banner. Growing up in the West Bank, the youngest of fighting brothers, Ahavat Hashem Gordon began training in Israel, where he followed his brothers into combat sports, starting with kickboxing under family influence, with his brother Amon serving as a Muay Thai coach.

He was a prodigy from the start. At age twelve, he claimed the gold medal in the youth category at the European Cup 2017 in Muay Thai, representing Israel. A year later, he was the reigning Israeli national youth champion. At the 2019 championships in Belarus, he and his brothers combined to bring home 14 medals.

His professional record reflects this philosophy. He holds a record of 10–0, with multiple wins by knockout and TKO. His professional debut in ONE Championship came on March 21, 2025, at ONE Friday Fights 101, and he has since gone undefeated in the world’s most prestigious Muay Thai organization, including victories over Seksan Fairtex and Eh Mwi. He trains at the elite Silapa Thai Gym in Thailand, sharpening himself against the world’s best.

Saturday Night in Kaunas — The Showdown

The week leading up to the fight at Kaunas’s Žalgiris Arena was unlike anything Gordon had faced before. His Turkish opponent, Ali Konyuncu — a seasoned veteran with a 15-4 record — did not come merely to fight. He came to wage war.

In the lead-up to the match, Konyuncu posted a series of pro-Palestinian messages on social media alongside harsh statements and antisemitic threats directed at Gordon. In videos shared to his personal accounts, Konyuncu appeared alongside a countdown clock to the fight, using inflammatory language and speaking of the “bloodshed” he expected his Israeli opponent to suffer. In one post, he wrote that on February 21 he would face an Israeli fighter and called on the entire Turkish nation to support him.

The situation grew serious enough that the Israeli Embassy in Lithuania requested reinforced security around Gordon ahead of the fight.

At the pre-fight weigh-in on Friday, Gordon walked out draped in the Israeli flag. What happened next was caught on camera and went viral around the world. During the face-off, Konyuncu lunged at Gordon’s neck, and the two had to be immediately restrained. Even while being held back, Konyuncu managed to kick Gordon in the midsection.

Gordon did not flinch. He stood his ground, with Israel’s flag on his shoulders, his eyes steady.

He had come to Kaunas — to Kovno — not to be provoked. He had come to fight.

Motzaei Shabbos, the lights came on. The arena filled. And Ahavat Hashem Gordon, the boy from the West Bank, walked out once more.

The first round was contested, with neither fighter able to establish clear dominance. But Gordon was composed — reading his opponent, absorbing information, waiting.

In the second round, the moment came. Konyuncu landed an uppercut, looking to seize momentum. Gordon answered with a blow to the head that sent his opponent to the floor. When the fighters were separated, Konyuncu was bleeding profusely from a wound on the side of his head. The judges saw enough. The fight was stopped. The victory was awarded to the Israeli.

After sustaining heavy punishment, Konyuncu withdrew, claiming he could no longer stand on his foot.

It would be easy to see this as simply a sports story. A young Israeli beats a provocative Turkish opponent.

Let us, in our mind’s eye, stand in Kaunas for a moment. Let us stand in what was once Kovno. Let us think of the forty shuls, the Slobodka Yeshiva, Rav Elchonon hy”d, his Kovetz shiurim, his Kovetz Ha’aros, the thirty thousand Jews herded into a ghetto, the children murdered while loudspeakers blared music to drown out their screams. Think of those who believed they had extinguished this people forever.

And then think of a nineteen-year-old Israeli boy — unbeaten, unbroken, 10 and 0 — standing in that same city, answering hatred with discipline and answering violence with a knockout.

The Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators dynamited the Kovno Ghetto three weeks before the Soviets arrived. They wanted no trace left. They thought they had won. But –  Ki lo yitosh Hashem amo — “For Hashem will not abandon His people” (Tehillim 94:14). They were wrong.

History has a way of answering back. There is a pasuk in Tehillim (118:17) that the survivors of Kovno knew by heart: Lo amus ki echyeh, v’asaper ma’asei Kah — “I shall not die, but I shall live, and I shall declare the works of G-d.” The murderers wrote the obituary of Kovno’s Jews. They were wrong about who would have the last word.

And on Motzaei Shabbos, in the city that the world once watched consume its Jews in fire, a young man wearing tzitzis raised his hand in victory.

The Golden Boy came to Kovno — not Kaunas. With Tzitzis a-flyin. He came out to the song of Hashem Yimloch l’Olam Va’ed.

And the Golden Boy won. But it was not just a win for him. It was a win for Rav Elchonon zatzal and ultimately for the world.  True, our way is the way of Torah – ki heim chayeinu, but when a supporter of Hamas who represents a nation that supports Hamas is trounced with somone named Ahavat Hashem – in a place that destroyed our Torah and to the words of Hashem melech hashem malach Hashem yimloch l’olam va’ed it may be some sort of Siman, some portent of what is to come..

Some will disagree, but the vast majority of the frum holocaust survivors who are left and their families would probably agree with the sentiment here..

The author can be reached at [email protected]