Police: War Hero Preys on Neighbor

Elderly Holocaust survivor swindled, abandoned in Poland
By Rob Wagner,  Newser User
Posted Feb 19, 2008 4:55 PM CST
Police: War Hero Preys on Neighbor
In this undated photo provided by the Yad Vashem Archives, shows a group of freedom fighters, including Aron Bielski, front row center. As a young boy in Poland during World War II, Bielski and his brothers stood defiantly against the Nazis by most accounts, mounted the largest armed rescue of Jews...   (Associated Press)

A Holocaust hero who with his brothers saved 1,200 Jews in one of the largest  armed rescues during World War II is accused of bilking a survivor of about $250,000, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Aron Bell dumped a 93-year-old Catholic survivor at a nursing home in Poland and then spent her money, Florida prosecutors allege.

Bell, 80, born Aron Bielski, and his wife, Henryka, 58, of Palm Beach, Fla., face  90 years imprisonment. Police say the couple befriended Janina Zaniewska who lived nearby and talked her into turning over her bank accounts. The couple is free on bail. Bell and his three older brothers were Polish partisans hiding Jews in their encampment while fighting  Germans. (More Holocaust stories.)

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