A positive attitude, coupled with a genuine love for all people, paves the way to a peaceful life for all of humankind. No one is born with hatred in his or her heart. On the contrary, loving care by one’s parents nurtures trust in others.
Growing up in a sheltering Jewish family and totally involved in my studies in Waterbury, Connecticut, I was not much aware of what was going on in the outside world. The Orthodox community was very small at that time.
When my parents and I decided that it was time for me to leave Waterbury because of the lack of observant people in the city, I moved to New York, where Rabbi Gewirtz was the religious leader. He suggested that I rent a room with his older brother and his wife whose four adult children had left home. They lived in East Brooklyn, were wonderful to me, and thought that I should spend some time with their daughter Pnina and her husband, Rabbi Herschel Schacter.
I spent many beautiful Shabbatot with them. Herschel had been a Jewish chaplain in the US Army at the time that the Buchenwald concentration camp had just been freed – on April 11, 1945. Pnina’s parents told me about Herschel, who was so traumatized by what he had seen that he never talked about it to anyone besides his immediate family.
When Herschel entered Buchenwald, he noticed some movement among bodies and discovered a child named Lulek, whose older brother, Naphtali, had smuggled him into the camp in a sack that he carried. When Herschel lifted him up in his arms, he asked the child how old he was. The child responded with the number eight and said that age didn’t matter because he was actually older [in life experience] than the rabbi, who could laugh and cry, whereas Lulek no longer had that ability.
Herschel did not let go of the child, who accompanied him as he announced in Yiddish to the inmates of the camp: “Yidden, you are free!”
Lulek Lau is now the emeritus Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. Resilience! Rabbi Herschel was so dedicated to our brethren that he remained at the camp for close to three months to help the survivors recover emotionally and regain their trust in the Jewish faith.
Resilience in its truest form
Although I was not in Europe during those terrible years, I have friends who survived the Holocaust. One of my dearest friends, Frieda Stolzberg Korobkin, was given a second chance at life when her weeping parents sent her, two sisters, and an older brother on the Kindertransport to England. Frieda wrote an exceptional book about her life called Throw Your Feet Over Your Shoulders, with a heart-wrenching poem at the end that summarizes her knowledge about her lost family. Resilience!
In another example of Resilience, my father had heard that some of his first cousins, the Chanovitches, from Glubokie, Belarus, had survived and were living in Kobe, Japan. They were among the last recipients of visas that had been provided by Chiune Sugihara, the first Japanese diplomat posted in Kovno, Lithuania, who was fluent in Russian. In 1940, when refugees needed visas from war-torn Europe, he granted more than 2,000, and among them were the Chanovitches. In January 1985, a short time before he died, Yad Vashem declared Sugihara a Righteous Among the Nations at a ceremony in Jerusalem.
In 1948, when the international community voted to create the establishment of the State of Israel, following 2,000 years of weeping and praying for this redemption, our Jewish state became a reality in our ancient homeland whose boundaries are clearly defined in our God-given Torah. I was sitting with my dad and listening to the count of nations that voted for this. When the number of votes reached 59, he burst into tears and couldn’t stop for several minutes. Just remembering that moment makes me tearful.
I have followed the articles by Walter Bingham in The Jerusalem Report and marvel at what he has accomplished in life, despite the traumatic loss of his family during the Holocaust. Resilience!
We as a people have trusted our Creator to protect us throughout the last 2,000 years. Through our Torah education and adherence to its teachings, we have demonstrated that the stamina to survive the vicissitudes of life with Resilience is built into our national character. May it continue as we venture forward to victory. Please God!■
The writer, a retired teacher who lives in Efrat, is co-organizer and director of Writing the Wrongs.