Mintz's name will be engraved on The Wall of Honour in The Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations in Jerusalem.
Kochba told YNet: “I was deeply moved to receive this wonderful news from Yad Vashem.
“On behalf of the entire family, I thank them for closing an 83-year circle. Symbolically, I will celebrate my 83rd birthday next week, and this is the most moving gift I could receive.”
The cover page from Ephraim's album (Image: Yad Vashem)[Missing Credit]
In 1943, three years after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, Kochba’s parents asked their friend Mintz to look after him and keep him safe, fully aware that they could be taken off to the concentration camps at any moment.
Mintz agreed and took in baby Kochba despite the fact that she was on her own because her Jewish husband Max was being held at the Westerbork transit camp, where Dutch Jews were kept before being transported to concentration camps.
One of the pages from Ephraim Kochba's childhood scrapbook (Image: Yad Vashem)[Missing Credit]
Mintz, who didn’t have any biological children, raised Kochba as if he was her own, detailing every stage of his early life with photographs in a scrapbook, from his first smile to his first steps.
Towards the end of the war, Kochba’s biological parents were murdered by the Nazis.
Ephraim Kochba at Yad Vashem (Image: Yad Vashem)[Missing Credit]
Sadly, Mintz then died while Kochba was still very young and he went to live with relatives of his biological parents.
Aged just four, he was taken to Israel by his adoptive family. He still lives there today.
For around the next two decades, he had no idea of his history or how he survived the Holocaust.
But in his early twenties, Kochba found out how Mintz had cared for him, and was even reunited with Max in the Netherlands.
Wedding photograph of Ephraim Kochba's biological parents (the child in the picture is not Ephraim) (Image: Yad Vashem)[Missing Credit]
At 40, Kochba received his childhood scrapbook album, translated into Hebrew by his relatives, and for the first time he was able to have a glimpse of his own childhood.
“I greatly appreciate Yad Vashem’s determination and care in advancing the recognition of Jacqueline, who is very deserving of it,” he told YNet.
