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HOMEHolocaust Studies People Saved by a Prayer
One Jew's miraculous story.
by Sara Yoheved Rigler
A Holocaust survivor once told me, “Every Jew who survived the Holocaust survived by a miracle.” Alexander Unger survived by four miracles.
Alexander was born to an affluent, religious Jewish family in the village of Hidosholos in southwestern Hungary in 1906. He was married with three children by 1940, when he was drafted into the Hungarian army.
His father-in-law, fearing for his safety, insisted on taking Alexander to the Shimoni Rebbe, a Hassidic rebbe known for the efficacy of his blessings. The Rebbe blessed Alexander and told him that whenever his life was in danger he should recite a certain Biblical verse and add the words, “with the intention of the Maharal of Prague.”
Alexander protested. The 16th-century Maharal of Prague had been a great scholar and Kabbalist. According to legend, he had made the Golem, who had saved the Jews of Prague from a blood libel. How could Alexander presume to say anything with the lofty intention of the Maharal?
The Rebbe acknowledged that of course he could not duplicate the mystical intention of the Maharal, but nevertheless he must recite the words in Yiddish, “with the intention of the Maharal of Prague” at the end of the Biblical verse whenever his life was in danger.
Alexander’s first assignment in the army was at the Hungarian Secret Police Station. He considered it a plumb assignment because his aunt lived across the street from the station, and at lunch hour he could go and eat kosher food at her house. She gave him kosher sandwiches to supply him till the next day. Throughout the war, Alexander was able to keep kosher until he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
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In March, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary. In April, Alexander was sent to a labor camp in Komaron. One day, on the seventh day of Passover, Alexander was ordered to join a group of 50 workers at the railroad station. The Nazis ordered them to load bales of hay and straw onto railroad cars to be shipped to the Russian front. The Hungarian authorities had always given ten-minute breaks every hour for the workers to smoke or use the toilet. The Germans, however, gave no breaks. After a while, the chain smokers started to smoke while loading the hay. Alexander warned them that the hay was highly flammable, but they ignored him.
The German guards accused the Jewish workers of sabotage.Suddenly the hay burst into flame and started a huge conflagration. Fortunately, there was a fire hydrant nearby. The workers passed buckets hand to hand, and managed to extinguish the blaze.
1949, Engagement photo Alexander Ungar and Elizabeth FriedThe German guards were irate. They accused the Hungarian Jewish workers of sabotage. They ordered the men to line up in ten rows of five and shouted that they would all be executed. The guards lifted their guns and aimed them at the hapless Jews. Alexander, in the last row, kept repeating the verse that the Shimoni Rebbe had instructed him.
The minutes dragged on, but the guards did not fire. Suddenly Alexander felt someone behind him strike him on the right shoulder. He turned around and saw the Captain of the Hungarian Secret Police, for whom he had worked earlier during the war. The Captain, who had liked Alexander because he was an intelligent and diligent worker, asked him what had happened. He explained that it was not sabotage; otherwise they would not have worked so hard to put out the fire. Rather, smokers could not keep from smoking, and a burning cigarette stub had accidentally ignited the straw. Alexander succeeded in convincing the Captain.
The execution was cancelled, and the men went back to work. “This was my first experience with that prayer,” Alexander recounted a half-century later.
The Bombs
Soon after, the American Air Force was heavily bombing that part of Hungary. Alexander’s work brigade was ordered to clear away the rubble after each air attack. Whenever the air raid siren sounded, the Hungarian officers allowed the Jewish slave laborers to run out of the camp and seek shelter. When the Germans took over, however, they forbid the Jews from fleeing the bombardments. The camp was next to a munitions factory, and 2,000 workers were killed during one bombing attack.
As Alexander later related:
When the Germans prohibited us from fleeing the bombs, I used what few resources I had to dig a little ditch. Whenever they sounded the siren, I took my tefillin and Book of Psalms that I had with me, and went into this little ditch. Of course, it didn’t protect me very much. If I was in the ditch and the explosion wasn’t too close, then I wasn’t harmed. But, since this kind of bomb made a tremendously large hole, like a funnel, if it hit anywhere near my ditch, there was no way to survive.
The bomb dropped right on the other side of the road, and killed both the German guard and seven of my friends.One day the siren went off and the airplanes flew overhead. I ran into the ditch, and started saying the verse. The bomb dropped right on the other side of the road, and killed both the German guard and seven of my friends.
Everyone in my labor brigade marveled at how I was not hurt. It was clearly a miracle. Soon after, another attack began. Everyone came running to me and jumped into the ditch with me. Even the dog ran to me for protection! It was unbelievable the way the dog behaved, as if he saw something. Maybe the dog saw the angel who was protecting me. Otherwise, why should the dog run to me in the ditch?
Potatoes for Passover
Afterwards, Alexander was deported to the infamous concentration camp of Buchenwald. He realized that his life depended on getting out of there by any means, so when the Germans started to assemble a transport of skilled workers, including auto mechanics, Alexander volunteered. The transport was sent to Tauchau, about seven kilometers from Leipzig, Germany. The factory in Tauchau manufactured the panzer faust, a hand grenade capable of blowing up a tank.
The tombstone of the Shimoni RavThe director of the labor camp announced that he needed someone to take care of the boiler, a highly technical job. This huge boiler had several tall chimneys and provided all the steam for the factory’s operation. Alexander stepped forward and declared that he was qualified to take care of the boiler. As proof, he claimed that he had received a diploma in engineering from Germany, and he cited the date and place where he had passed his exam. The director immediately went to the telephone and called the institute. He verified that Alexander was telling the truth and was certified to handle the boiler.
Part of Alexander’s job was to check the chimney pipes so that the soot that collected in the S-curves of the pipes would not block the flow of the smoke. One day when he was checking the pipes, he noticed a square crack on the wall of the room. It turned out to be a large cement block. He determined to check why this block was different than the others. With great exertion, he managed to remove the block. He saw that it opened to an adjoining room that was being used to store potatoes.
Alexander had smuggled a Jewish calendar into the camp, so he knew that the holiday of Passover was just a week away. He thrilled with excitement to realize that he didn’t have to stay alive by eating bread on Passover. Here was an unlimited supply of potatoes!
But how would he get the potatoes out without being caught? Alexander devised a plan, but he needed help, so he asked another Hungarian Jewish inmate named Klein to assist him. He explained his plan to Klein, who eagerly agreed, because, like all the other inmates, he lived on starvation rations and was always hungry.
Because there was no fire in the boiler on Sundays, the following Sunday Alexander sent a note to the camp director saying that he wanted to go into the factory to do some maintenance work. The director authorized him to go into the factory, but he sent an SS guard to keep an eye on him.
As Alexander later told the story:
The SS guard came and escorted us into the factory. Klein said to me, “How can we accomplish what we want? The SS is right here! He’s watching our every move!”
I said to him, “I have a special prayer that I say in times of danger. And if we have in our minds that on Pesach we will try not to eat chametz, because we will be able to live on the potatoes, then we will succeed.”
“But what will we do about the SS guard?” Klein protested.
I answered that we will say my special prayer, and take the risk, and God will help us to succeed.” So we said the prayer, and went with the SS guard to the factory.
When we arrived at the factory, I said to the SS guard, “You know our job is to remove the black soot from certain areas of the boiler. You are dressed in a nice clean uniform. You better get out of here, otherwise you are going to be so covered with soot that you will look like a chimney sweeper.” The guard was very pleased that I was so concerned about his appearance. When he left the room, we went to the room with the loose block and we removed the block. Klein climbed in through the opening and went down to the potato storage and started shoveling out potatoes.
Suddenly the SS guard returned and asked, “Where is the other fellow?”
I said, “Can’t you hear him shoveling the soot? Don’t come in here because in a moment I am going to open the bottom of this pipe and you’re going to be as black as a chimneysweeper. I’ve warned you.” At once, the SS guard ran away.
We immediately took a wheelbarrow that we usually used to remove trash, and placed it under the funnel, and opened up the bottom of an underground pipe that we had discovered, and the potatoes tumbled into the wheelbarrow. From there we took the wheelbarrow to another underground pipe and hid them there. We made two trips with the wheelbarrow, which was quite a lot of potatoes. We returned to the camp without the SS guard suspecting anything. On Pesach, we ate our potatoes.
Bright as Daylight
When the American army approached the area of the factory, the Nazis ordered the inmates to evacuate. They delivered a speech in which they said that this would not be a Death March. They assured the inmates that they had done an excellent job in the factory and would receive special treatment. “Of course,” Alexander later remarked, “we never believed a word the SS said.”
When it was time to evacuate, the Germans lined up the prisoners in rows of five across, in order to easily notice escapees. Accompanying every fifth row was an SS guard with an automatic rifle. The Commander announced that if anyone tried to escape, they would find him and kill him on the spot.
Alexander and his friend Klein started walking. Klein asked him, “How will we escape this one?”
Twenty-five years after the Holocaust Alexander went back to Hungary to visit the grave of his father and the grave of the Shimoni Rav. Here he is praying at his grave site.Alexander replied, “We will say the special prayer with real feeling, and God will help us.”
The march was accompanied by a wagon that carried some food and blankets. Fifteen prisoners — three rows of five — were needed to push this wagon. Every hour the shift of those pushing the wagon changed. Alexander noticed that while the guards were careful to count the prisoners in every marching row, they didn’t count the prisoners who pushed the wagon. And whenever they stopped to change the prisoners pushing the wagon, they allowed everyone to rest for ten minutes.
Although they were starved and exhausted, to their own amazement they ran with vigor.Around midnight on that dark, moonless night, it was Alexander’s and Klein’s turn to start pushing the wagon. They were resting in a ditch they had found. Alexander told Klein that they should lie down in the ditch and pretend to sleep. When the call came to start moving, they should remain in the ditch. If the Germans noticed that two men were missing and found them in the ditch, they could say they had fallen asleep. But Alexander assumed that the Germans would not notice so soon, and this would be their chance to escape.
They stayed in the ditch and kept reciting, over and over again, the special prayer. When they could no longer hear the sound of the men walking in the distance, they jumped up and started to run in the opposite direction. They took off their concentration camp uniforms, leaving on only their shirts, and ran. Although they were starved and exhausted, to their own amazement they ran with vigor.
Whenever they heard a vehicle approaching, they jumped off the highway and hid on the side of the road. After a while a car approached with such weak headlights that they barely had time to jump off the road into the embankment. The car stopped directly above them. Afraid that the occupants of the car had seen them and that they were about to be killed, Alexander fervently recited his special verse.
An SS captain and sergeant got out of the car. The sergeant said to the captain, “It’s impossible for the prisoners to have come this far, because they were tired and they would have had to run fast to cover this much distance. We must have passed them. They must be behind us somewhere.”
The captain replied, “Anyway, it’s so dark we can’t see a thing. We have some flares. Let’s shoot up some flares and make sure that as long as we’ve stopped here, that they’re not here.”
It was as bright as daylight. The SS men looked straight at us and said, “It looks like they’re not here.”The sergeant took the flares out of the car and shot them off right above the two escapees. As Alexander related:
It was as bright as daylight. I was saying the verse with all my might. The SS men looked straight at us and said, “It looks like they’re not here.” We had become invisible to them! The captain said, “All right, let’s go back to the car. Probably we passed them.”
Alexander Unger survived the war. His wife and three children perished. He immigrated to the United States in May, 1947, settling in Queens, New York. There he married and had two daughters and three grandchildren. He lived to the age of 92.
November 1997, 90th birthday party, attended by most of the Ungar clan.Judaism is not Harry Potter, and the verse was not a magical incantation. I do not presume to understand how the blessing of a holy person, carried on the recitation of certain words, could save a life. Nor do I understand why Alexander Unger was saved while millions of others were not. But one thing is clear: Despite having lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust, Alexander Unger remained a devout, believing Jew.
He concluded his unpublished memoirs with these words:
When my daughter Oriana asks me how I can believe in God after the Holocaust, I answer, “How can I NOT believe in God after all the miracles I experienced?”
For Sara Yoheved Rigler’s Spring Tour schedule or to order her new book God Winked, visit her website, www.sararigler.com.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HOMEHolocaust Studies People Saved by a Prayer
One Jew's miraculous story.
by Sara Yoheved Rigler
A Holocaust survivor once told me, “Every Jew who survived the Holocaust survived by a miracle.” Alexander Unger survived by four miracles.
Alexander was born to an affluent, religious Jewish family in the village of Hidosholos in southwestern Hungary in 1906. He was married with three children by 1940, when he was drafted into the Hungarian army.
His father-in-law, fearing for his safety, insisted on taking Alexander to the Shimoni Rebbe, a Hassidic rebbe known for the efficacy of his blessings. The Rebbe blessed Alexander and told him that whenever his life was in danger he should recite a certain Biblical verse and add the words, “with the intention of the Maharal of Prague.”
Alexander protested. The 16th-century Maharal of Prague had been a great scholar and Kabbalist. According to legend, he had made the Golem, who had saved the Jews of Prague from a blood libel. How could Alexander presume to say anything with the lofty intention of the Maharal?
The Rebbe acknowledged that of course he could not duplicate the mystical intention of the Maharal, but nevertheless he must recite the words in Yiddish, “with the intention of the Maharal of Prague” at the end of the Biblical verse whenever his life was in danger.
Alexander’s first assignment in the army was at the Hungarian Secret Police Station. He considered it a plumb assignment because his aunt lived across the street from the station, and at lunch hour he could go and eat kosher food at her house. She gave him kosher sandwiches to supply him till the next day. Throughout the war, Alexander was able to keep kosher until he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Click here to receive Aish.com's free weekly email.
In March, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary. In April, Alexander was sent to a labor camp in Komaron. One day, on the seventh day of Passover, Alexander was ordered to join a group of 50 workers at the railroad station. The Nazis ordered them to load bales of hay and straw onto railroad cars to be shipped to the Russian front. The Hungarian authorities had always given ten-minute breaks every hour for the workers to smoke or use the toilet. The Germans, however, gave no breaks. After a while, the chain smokers started to smoke while loading the hay. Alexander warned them that the hay was highly flammable, but they ignored him.
The German guards accused the Jewish workers of sabotage.Suddenly the hay burst into flame and started a huge conflagration. Fortunately, there was a fire hydrant nearby. The workers passed buckets hand to hand, and managed to extinguish the blaze.
1949, Engagement photo Alexander Ungar and Elizabeth FriedThe German guards were irate. They accused the Hungarian Jewish workers of sabotage. They ordered the men to line up in ten rows of five and shouted that they would all be executed. The guards lifted their guns and aimed them at the hapless Jews. Alexander, in the last row, kept repeating the verse that the Shimoni Rebbe had instructed him.
The minutes dragged on, but the guards did not fire. Suddenly Alexander felt someone behind him strike him on the right shoulder. He turned around and saw the Captain of the Hungarian Secret Police, for whom he had worked earlier during the war. The Captain, who had liked Alexander because he was an intelligent and diligent worker, asked him what had happened. He explained that it was not sabotage; otherwise they would not have worked so hard to put out the fire. Rather, smokers could not keep from smoking, and a burning cigarette stub had accidentally ignited the straw. Alexander succeeded in convincing the Captain.
The execution was cancelled, and the men went back to work. “This was my first experience with that prayer,” Alexander recounted a half-century later.
The Bombs
Soon after, the American Air Force was heavily bombing that part of Hungary. Alexander’s work brigade was ordered to clear away the rubble after each air attack. Whenever the air raid siren sounded, the Hungarian officers allowed the Jewish slave laborers to run out of the camp and seek shelter. When the Germans took over, however, they forbid the Jews from fleeing the bombardments. The camp was next to a munitions factory, and 2,000 workers were killed during one bombing attack.
As Alexander later related:
When the Germans prohibited us from fleeing the bombs, I used what few resources I had to dig a little ditch. Whenever they sounded the siren, I took my tefillin and Book of Psalms that I had with me, and went into this little ditch. Of course, it didn’t protect me very much. If I was in the ditch and the explosion wasn’t too close, then I wasn’t harmed. But, since this kind of bomb made a tremendously large hole, like a funnel, if it hit anywhere near my ditch, there was no way to survive.
The bomb dropped right on the other side of the road, and killed both the German guard and seven of my friends.One day the siren went off and the airplanes flew overhead. I ran into the ditch, and started saying the verse. The bomb dropped right on the other side of the road, and killed both the German guard and seven of my friends.
Everyone in my labor brigade marveled at how I was not hurt. It was clearly a miracle. Soon after, another attack began. Everyone came running to me and jumped into the ditch with me. Even the dog ran to me for protection! It was unbelievable the way the dog behaved, as if he saw something. Maybe the dog saw the angel who was protecting me. Otherwise, why should the dog run to me in the ditch?
Potatoes for Passover
Afterwards, Alexander was deported to the infamous concentration camp of Buchenwald. He realized that his life depended on getting out of there by any means, so when the Germans started to assemble a transport of skilled workers, including auto mechanics, Alexander volunteered. The transport was sent to Tauchau, about seven kilometers from Leipzig, Germany. The factory in Tauchau manufactured the panzer faust, a hand grenade capable of blowing up a tank.
The tombstone of the Shimoni RavThe director of the labor camp announced that he needed someone to take care of the boiler, a highly technical job. This huge boiler had several tall chimneys and provided all the steam for the factory’s operation. Alexander stepped forward and declared that he was qualified to take care of the boiler. As proof, he claimed that he had received a diploma in engineering from Germany, and he cited the date and place where he had passed his exam. The director immediately went to the telephone and called the institute. He verified that Alexander was telling the truth and was certified to handle the boiler.
Part of Alexander’s job was to check the chimney pipes so that the soot that collected in the S-curves of the pipes would not block the flow of the smoke. One day when he was checking the pipes, he noticed a square crack on the wall of the room. It turned out to be a large cement block. He determined to check why this block was different than the others. With great exertion, he managed to remove the block. He saw that it opened to an adjoining room that was being used to store potatoes.
Alexander had smuggled a Jewish calendar into the camp, so he knew that the holiday of Passover was just a week away. He thrilled with excitement to realize that he didn’t have to stay alive by eating bread on Passover. Here was an unlimited supply of potatoes!
But how would he get the potatoes out without being caught? Alexander devised a plan, but he needed help, so he asked another Hungarian Jewish inmate named Klein to assist him. He explained his plan to Klein, who eagerly agreed, because, like all the other inmates, he lived on starvation rations and was always hungry.
Because there was no fire in the boiler on Sundays, the following Sunday Alexander sent a note to the camp director saying that he wanted to go into the factory to do some maintenance work. The director authorized him to go into the factory, but he sent an SS guard to keep an eye on him.
As Alexander later told the story:
The SS guard came and escorted us into the factory. Klein said to me, “How can we accomplish what we want? The SS is right here! He’s watching our every move!”
I said to him, “I have a special prayer that I say in times of danger. And if we have in our minds that on Pesach we will try not to eat chametz, because we will be able to live on the potatoes, then we will succeed.”
“But what will we do about the SS guard?” Klein protested.
I answered that we will say my special prayer, and take the risk, and God will help us to succeed.” So we said the prayer, and went with the SS guard to the factory.
When we arrived at the factory, I said to the SS guard, “You know our job is to remove the black soot from certain areas of the boiler. You are dressed in a nice clean uniform. You better get out of here, otherwise you are going to be so covered with soot that you will look like a chimney sweeper.” The guard was very pleased that I was so concerned about his appearance. When he left the room, we went to the room with the loose block and we removed the block. Klein climbed in through the opening and went down to the potato storage and started shoveling out potatoes.
Suddenly the SS guard returned and asked, “Where is the other fellow?”
I said, “Can’t you hear him shoveling the soot? Don’t come in here because in a moment I am going to open the bottom of this pipe and you’re going to be as black as a chimneysweeper. I’ve warned you.” At once, the SS guard ran away.
We immediately took a wheelbarrow that we usually used to remove trash, and placed it under the funnel, and opened up the bottom of an underground pipe that we had discovered, and the potatoes tumbled into the wheelbarrow. From there we took the wheelbarrow to another underground pipe and hid them there. We made two trips with the wheelbarrow, which was quite a lot of potatoes. We returned to the camp without the SS guard suspecting anything. On Pesach, we ate our potatoes.
Bright as Daylight
When the American army approached the area of the factory, the Nazis ordered the inmates to evacuate. They delivered a speech in which they said that this would not be a Death March. They assured the inmates that they had done an excellent job in the factory and would receive special treatment. “Of course,” Alexander later remarked, “we never believed a word the SS said.”
When it was time to evacuate, the Germans lined up the prisoners in rows of five across, in order to easily notice escapees. Accompanying every fifth row was an SS guard with an automatic rifle. The Commander announced that if anyone tried to escape, they would find him and kill him on the spot.
Alexander and his friend Klein started walking. Klein asked him, “How will we escape this one?”
Twenty-five years after the Holocaust Alexander went back to Hungary to visit the grave of his father and the grave of the Shimoni Rav. Here he is praying at his grave site.Alexander replied, “We will say the special prayer with real feeling, and God will help us.”
The march was accompanied by a wagon that carried some food and blankets. Fifteen prisoners — three rows of five — were needed to push this wagon. Every hour the shift of those pushing the wagon changed. Alexander noticed that while the guards were careful to count the prisoners in every marching row, they didn’t count the prisoners who pushed the wagon. And whenever they stopped to change the prisoners pushing the wagon, they allowed everyone to rest for ten minutes.
Although they were starved and exhausted, to their own amazement they ran with vigor.Around midnight on that dark, moonless night, it was Alexander’s and Klein’s turn to start pushing the wagon. They were resting in a ditch they had found. Alexander told Klein that they should lie down in the ditch and pretend to sleep. When the call came to start moving, they should remain in the ditch. If the Germans noticed that two men were missing and found them in the ditch, they could say they had fallen asleep. But Alexander assumed that the Germans would not notice so soon, and this would be their chance to escape.
They stayed in the ditch and kept reciting, over and over again, the special prayer. When they could no longer hear the sound of the men walking in the distance, they jumped up and started to run in the opposite direction. They took off their concentration camp uniforms, leaving on only their shirts, and ran. Although they were starved and exhausted, to their own amazement they ran with vigor.
Whenever they heard a vehicle approaching, they jumped off the highway and hid on the side of the road. After a while a car approached with such weak headlights that they barely had time to jump off the road into the embankment. The car stopped directly above them. Afraid that the occupants of the car had seen them and that they were about to be killed, Alexander fervently recited his special verse.
An SS captain and sergeant got out of the car. The sergeant said to the captain, “It’s impossible for the prisoners to have come this far, because they were tired and they would have had to run fast to cover this much distance. We must have passed them. They must be behind us somewhere.”
The captain replied, “Anyway, it’s so dark we can’t see a thing. We have some flares. Let’s shoot up some flares and make sure that as long as we’ve stopped here, that they’re not here.”
It was as bright as daylight. The SS men looked straight at us and said, “It looks like they’re not here.”The sergeant took the flares out of the car and shot them off right above the two escapees. As Alexander related:
It was as bright as daylight. I was saying the verse with all my might. The SS men looked straight at us and said, “It looks like they’re not here.” We had become invisible to them! The captain said, “All right, let’s go back to the car. Probably we passed them.”
Alexander Unger survived the war. His wife and three children perished. He immigrated to the United States in May, 1947, settling in Queens, New York. There he married and had two daughters and three grandchildren. He lived to the age of 92.
November 1997, 90th birthday party, attended by most of the Ungar clan.Judaism is not Harry Potter, and the verse was not a magical incantation. I do not presume to understand how the blessing of a holy person, carried on the recitation of certain words, could save a life. Nor do I understand why Alexander Unger was saved while millions of others were not. But one thing is clear: Despite having lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust, Alexander Unger remained a devout, believing Jew.
He concluded his unpublished memoirs with these words:
When my daughter Oriana asks me how I can believe in God after the Holocaust, I answer, “How can I NOT believe in God after all the miracles I experienced?”
For Sara Yoheved Rigler’s Spring Tour schedule or to order her new book God Winked, visit her website, www.sararigler.com.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Dorit Korenblum grew up thinking she would never know much about her father's family, most of whom perished during the Holocaust. The only known surviving relic was one photo of his mother – Dorit’s grandmother – taken in Warsaw before the war.
When Dorit visited her aunt Chela-Chinka in Paris in the early 1980’s, she was amazed to discover dozens of perfectly preserved photos of the Korenblum family. When the Nazi’s invaded Poland, Chinka, as she was called, escaped to Russia with her two brothers, taking the valuable photos with her for fear she would never see her family again. Dorit was particularly fascinated by one specific photo of her grandparents and their children, including her father Yaakov with his siblings.
Yaakov was the youngest of five children born to Tuvia and Bracha Korenblum in Warsaw. During the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Yaakov escaped to Russia with his older brother Nachum and his sister, Chele-Chinka. The rest of the family perished at the hands of the Nazis, with the exception of another sister Sarah Leah who was living in Paris before the War.
“I knew that photo of my grandparents and their children would play an important part in our family's future,” Dorit recalls. “Although I had no idea how.” She insisted that her aunt let her keep the photo, though only several decades later would its significance be understood.
Runaway Brothers
Tuvia Korenblum was a successful bookbinder in pre-war Warsaw, known far and wide for his golden hands. Bracha Korenblum was pregnant with her first son, Nachum, during World War I. Due to malnutrition caused by poor war rations he was born disabled, unable to walk. At the age of seven he was finally sent for treatments and was healed. From that day on, however, Nachum refused to walk—instead he preferred to run everywhere he went. He quickly became a leader and his younger brother Yaakov became his trusty follower. The two were inseparable. "The degree of love in their family was much stronger than anything we find today," says Dorit.
Germans guards tried to convince them to return to Poland.When the Nazis invaded Poland, the two youngest Korenblum children, Yaakov and his sister Chele-Chinka, followed their older brother Nachum across the border into Russia. The Germans tried hard to convince escaped Jews to return to Poland by distributing brochures at the border checkpoints, insisting that they didn't intend the Jews any harm. Many Jews succumbed to these empty promises, believing falsely that the Russian winter was a much greater enemy than the Nazis.
The three Korenblum siblings stood at the crossing, unsure what to do. On one hand, they had been forced to leave their parents behind, who were too old to flee home. On the other hand, the stories of Nazi cruelty during the early days of Hitler's rise to power had already reached their ears. The Korenblums decided to watch the Nazi soldiers who were stationed at the border to see what they were all about. After a while they concluded that returning to Poland was suicide.
"I wasn't about to put myself into their hands," Yaakov recounted years later. "The Russians may have been violent at times, but the Germans were extremely cruel. We weren't going back." Nonetheless, Chele-Chinka returned to Warsaw one more time to attempt to convince their parents to follow them into Russia, to no avail.
Brothers at Arms
In Russia, Chele-Chinka was adopted by a poor Kazaki family who cared for her in return for housework. The two brothers decided that the best way to survive as refugee orphans was to join the Red Army. The two were stationed in Outer Mongolia, to thwart the Japanese expansion into Mongolia and lower Siberia. For five long years during the war, they never left each other’s side. Suddenly in 1944, just as the war was ending, Yaakov and Nachum were recruited into different units and they completely lost all contact with each other. They never found each other again.
After the war, both brothers – unbeknownst of each other – made their way back to Poland in search of surviving relatives. Neither reached his destination, however. Yaakov's money was stolen by a fellow soldier in Stanislavov, Ukraine, and he was unable to continue his journey. He ended up staying in Stanislavov, where he married and stayed for over a decade.
Nacham, on the other hand, was lacking certain papers and was unable to go further west than Kiev. That’s where he stayed and got married. For years the two brothers searched painfully for each other, but the Red Cross in Russia – either uninformed or uninterested in helping survivors – provided no answers.
In 1957, Yaakov managed to get exit visas to Israel for himself, his wife, and two children. They left the Soviet Union via Poland. Only once they had entered Poland were they able to track down their two surviving sisters and reunite, Chela-Chinka who had immigrated to Paris, and Sarah Leah who fled from the Nazi invasion of France to Morocco.
Unfortunately, they were never able to track down Nachum, who was still living on the other side of the Iron Curtain. They mourned the loss of their brother all their lives – certain that he was still alive somewhere. Shortly before Chele-Chinka passed away in 2006, she held Dorit's hand and said, "look for Nachum, look for Nachum."However, even after the fall of communism, the searches were always in vain, due largely to the fact that Nachum’s last name was changed to Koramblyum in the Ukraine.
Nachum remained separated from the rest of the surviving family members for the rest of his life. “He didn’t have any family,” Nachum’s oldest son Anatoly said. “He searched all his life for them and was very disappointed to never find them.”
Yaakov and his family eventually settled in Haifa. Dorit, their third child, was born there a few years later.
The lost brother, Nachum, remained in Kiev, also raising three children. His family relocated to the United States in 1991, after the fall of communism. Both Yaakov and Nachum continued the family business of bookbinding, over a thousand miles away from each other – Yaakov in Haifa, and Nachum in Kiev. They were both famous for their golden hands, just like their father
A Living Testament
In 1958, shortly after Yaakov moved to Israel, he entered a “Page of Testimony” for his deceased parents in Yad Vashem's Database of Victims' Names. In 2004 this database of over 4 million names went online. In 2006, Dorit's older sister, Bracha, decided to update details on her grandfather's Page of Testimony. She uploaded a copy of the family photograph that Dorit had taken from their Aunt Chele-Chinka in Paris two decades earlier – a photo that included the inseparable young brothers, Yaakov and Nachum.
Five years later, in the fall of 2011, Nachum's grandson, Igor Korenblum of New York, conducted a search on the Yad Vashem database and found the Page of Testimony submitted for his great-grandfather Tuvia Korenblum. Until this point, the descendents of “lost brother Nachum” never had any connection with the rest of the family tree.
They were suspicious of an email from a “long-lost cousin.”When Anatoly saw the photographs, he was shocked to see that one of Tuvia's children bore a striking resemblance to the photos he had seen of his father Nachum as a young man. Only then did he realize that the post must have been made by his very own cousins. "I couldn't sleep for a week, it was so exciting,” he recalls. “This was the first time I had seen the faces of my father's family. My father would mention that I looked like his younger brother Yaakov – and now I saw it was true!"
When Dorit and Bracha received an email from Anatoly claiming to be their long-lost cousin, they were suspicious. "It's a good Jewish quality," Dorit said. "We have to be suspicious to survive in a world that sought to destroy our ancestors. We asked for proof."
Anatoly responded by sending a photo of his father before the war and another of his aunt Sarah Leah and her husband in Paris.
"This is him!" Dorit exclaimed. "I couldn't believe it."
"Since I was a little boy, I remember my father telling me that he had a brother," Nachum's son Gennadiy recalls. "'He is somewhere,' he used to say.’I always held him in my hands. I never let anyone separate us.'"
Gennadiy's oldest son Yvgeny received a bris at age 13 when they arrived in America. At the bris he was given the Hebrew name Yaakov, after his grandfather's "lost" brother.
Coming Full Circle
Nachum died in 1996. Yaakov died five years later in 2001. Now, more than a decade later, their children were united at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. Amazingly, their first contact by email took place on the yartzeit memorial of Yaakov’s death. "We are happy to find our cousins, but we are sad that our fathers never had a chance to find each other in their lifetimes," Anatoly said. "Maybe our fathers in heaven made it possible for us to find each other this day."
The new cousins continue to stay in touch regularly and are planning more transcontinental trips to spend time catching up with each other.
"I am sure our fathers are happy now upstairs seeing us all here together," Gennadiy says. "This means everything to me."
"A circle has been closed,” said Yaakov's only son Rafael Korenblum. “There was something unresolved all these years. It lingered, and now there is closure."
Cynthia Wroclawski, the manager of Yad Vashem's name recovery project, explained that similar breakthroughs happen on a regular basis. Increased discoveries are being made more and more nowadays, thanks to the internet, as well as to greater openness among aging survivors to tell their stories and the curiosity of their tech-savvy descendents.
"The lock is being opened by the younger generation,” she says. “They have more intuition and more interest. That's the power of the database. The torch of memory is being passed."
Efforts are continuing to collect names – primarily in Eastern Europe – where Jews were often rounded up, shot and dumped into mass graves without any documentation. On the other hand, the names of Jews killed at German death camps are recorded in the meticulous Nazi records.
Yad Vashem encourages survivors and their descendents to fill out pages of testimony for those killed, before their names and stories are lost forever.
"There is still much more to do," Wroclawski said. "For these families, the rift of the Holocaust is getting smaller. Some kind of healing is taking place."
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http://www.aish.com/ho/p/97788879.html?s=g
A tribute to 10 brave Jewish women who stood up to the Nazis.
Greater than Angels: Interview with Pearl Benisch
by Daisy Benchimol
There is an old Polish legend about a dragon named Smok who was in the habit of roaming the streets of Krakow in search of young maidens to eat, while spreading terror and destroying everything in its path. In her stirring Holocaust memoir, To Vanquish the Dragon, Pearl Benisch describes the encounter of the Jewish community of Poland with the Nazi dragon of the 20th Century; and the victory of the maidens who dared to fight the beast.
Mrs. Benisch, who was born and raised in Krakow, describes the extraordinary faith and self-sacrifice shown by her family and other members of her Jewish community during the Holocaust. Her memoir is a rare tribute to the heroism of some of the victims themselves, including the unimaginable courage and strength shown by a group of ten female friends, nicknamed the Zehnerschaft, who supported each other through the tortures of the ghettos, deportations and death camps
The Zehnerschaft was made up of young women between the ages of 16 and 26, including Mrs. Benisch herself, who were all colleagues and teachers from Beth Yaakov schools for girls in Krakow and surrounding areas. Mrs. Benisch gives detailed accounts of the inspiring way these brave women repeatedly risked their lives to help others and uphold their commitment to Torah and Jewish observance. Armed with the Jewish values and ideals that had been transmitted to them, they managed to become models of courage and altruism even in the bowels of hell.
In Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl observed that “…most men in a concentration camp believed the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences turning life into an inner triumph…” The women of the Zehnerschaft became living proof that the type of spiritual victory Frankl was describing is possible in the nightmare of the death camps
During a recent interview at her home in Brooklyn, Mrs. Benisch spoke about her friends in the Zehnerschaft and some of the lessons she learned from her experiences in the Holocaust.
Can you give an example of the courage shown by the women of the Zehnershaft?
At Plashow one of our jobs was to clean the kitchen. So sometimes we managed to get hold of a little bit of flour. We would mix it with water and bake matza biscuits on top of the stove. We were not permitted to go into the men’s camp but we had to deliver the biscuits to the men who were working in what was called the “library.” There were many important rabbis in the camp and some of them had been assigned to sorting books and manuscripts; believe it or not the Germans wanted to have the Hebrew books. So late at night we would sneak down to bring them those biscuits and sometimes a few turnips, a piece of bread, or whatever we could get our hands on. It was a dangerous trip because we had to sneak past the trigger-happy soldiers in the watchtower. Every day another girl would risk her life to bring them this food so they wouldn’t starve to death.
The monster ran from barrack to barrack looking for us, but miraculously, he didn’t find us. One night we were spotted by Willie who was the most dreaded SS man in the camp, known for his habit of gouging out his victim’s eyes. We ran in terror. We were past caring about being shot – we just didn’t want him to catch us alive. He chased after us but, thank God, we managed to lose him. We reached our barrack and jumped into our bunks. The monster didn’t give up. He ran from barrack to barrack looking for us, but miraculously, he didn’t find us.
What do you think made you and your friends in the Zehnerschaft act with so much courage?
I will tell you a story. We arrived in Auschwitz and they took us to a crematorium with brown wooden doors on which was written the word sauna (shower). It was Friday afternoon and we had just come from Plashow. There were 2,000 girls and we all knew what was coming. There was an electric fence and some of the girls went over to the fence. They said, “Why should we wait to go to the gas chambers? Let’s end it all now.” So I said to them, “The Torah tells us, 'u’bacharta b’chaim' – choose life [Deut. 30:19]. Girls, we have to choose life! No matter what life will do to us, we have to choose life.” And that’s what we did – we chose life. We waited for those doors to open. They never opened for us – we don’t know why. In the morning, Saturday, they marched us to the women’s camp.
In your book you describe many extraordinary incidents involving your friend Rivkah Horowitz who was with you through most of the war. Can you tell me a bit about her?
There has never been a hero like Rivkah Horowitz-Pinkusewitz. She was a teacher and a leader in Beth Yaakov. She was smart and brave. One day in Plashow we were sewing uniforms for the Germans. Next to my sewing machine was Erma’s machine. Erma was depressed and we were trying to cheer her up. Suddenly the door opened and in walked the dreaded Oberscharfuhrer John with two SS men. We all stood at attention, but Erma just sat there; she wasn’t all there any more. So I tried to alert her with a kick. Snap out of it Erma I prayed, but she didn’t get up.
There must have been a thousand women there but he noticed her right away. He walked straight up to her and pointed his gun at her temple – we were all familiar with the joy he found in shooting people. All of a sudden, Rivkah, who was sitting next to us, gets up quickly and faces him and says, “Herr Oberscharfuhrer, this is not her fault, she is meshuge.” She couldn’t remember the German word for crazy so she said meshuge. Now he didn’t know the meaning of meshuge but he couldn’t get over the fact that a girl had the guts to talk to him and to ask him not to shoot her friend. But he didn’t shoot her. He put his gun back and walked away. That was Rivkah.
You also write about the time Rivkah Horowitz tried to save your life during one of the selections at Birkenau. What stands out for you about that incident?
I was dressed already but they gave me a big jacket of a man’s suit and I must have looked terrible because when I came to Hoess, he pointed to the left which meant death – the crematorium. Rivkah was sent to the right, but she snuck around to the left to join me. I begged her to go back but she refused. “I won’t leave you,” she said. “I’m not giving up. We have to keep fighting.”
After us came Ruchka Schanzer: right. Then Sarah Blaugrund: left. Ruchka ran after Sarah to the left. The rest of our Zehnerschaft passed safely, but the four of us were on the left. Then Rivkah took us back to the middle of the line. I was afraid that Hoess would recognize us but Rivkah didn’t care. When we reached Hoess again the same thing happened: he sent Sarah and me to the left and Rivkah and Ruchka to the right. But the two of them followed us again to the left.
I screamed in frustration, “Why follow us to death?! It’s not just your life you’re forfeiting, but also the lives of future generations. You have no right to do it. Go back to the other side where you belong!” Sarah and I shouted, cried and pleaded with them, but they had made up their minds. Rivkah dragged us to the back of the line but when we reached Hoess the third time, the same scenario repeated itself and, once more, Rivkah and Ruchka followed us. By now the selection was over. The girls who had been chosen to live were taken out of the barrack and the four of us stayed behind in the death block with all the other condemned women.
What happened after that?
That same evening…it was Shabbos…someone knocked on the door of our barrack. The Blockalteste opened it and in walked our friend Tillie Rinder, known by all as the White Angel of Auschwitz, and Toni Katz, another angel. They said to us: “Girls, hurry up. Follow us and stay in the shadows. May God watch over us.” The Blockalteste opened the door and allowed us to step out with our rescuers. We followed them, hugging the walls to avoid the floodlights. Then we had to cross the vast Appelplatz which was flooded with light from all the watchtowers. The watchmen had orders to shoot anyone who was seen walking there.
We had to cross the vast Appelplatz which was flooded with light. The watchmen had orders to shoot anyone seen walking there. We were terrified – not for ourselves anymore since we were doomed anyway, but for our rescuers. I prayed for their lives. Thank God we made it across and stood in front of the barracks of the living. Nobody said a word. Everything had been prearranged. The Blockalteste assigned us to our bunks, and we were joyfully reunited with the other girls of our Zehnerschaft.
You write about the heroism of Tzila Orlean who was a teacher at Beth Yaakov before the war and who “constantly walked the tightrope between life and death” in order to help others. What stands out most in your mind about Tzila?
I don’t even know where to begin talking about Tzila. If I had the strength left I would write a book about her. In Auschwitz, the Germans called her “Orlean” – Tzila was the only inmate called by name. Everyone who knew her respected her. One Friday she lit the Shabbos candle and said the blessing. All the women in the barrack were watching her, and this gave them hope and the will to continue living. They were all standing there and suddenly they heard the footsteps of an SS guard nearing the barrack. Everyone panicked. “Tzila, Tzila! Put out the candle!”
And Tzila said calmly, “This is my Shabbos candle, I wouldn’t dream of blowing it out.”
Everybody ran out of the barrack. He came in and looked at her and then at the candle. She kept looking at her candle. He stood there looking and then he left.
Can you talk about the time Tzila saved the 20 women who had been selected by Mengele?
When we arrived in Auschwitz there were 2,000 of us but Mengele selected 20 women, including my Aunt Sabina, and they were taken away. I asked Tzila if she could help them. “If Mengele selected them, they’re doomed,” she said. “But if he put them in block 25 there might still be a chance for a miracle. Let’s pray and hope.”
The next day Tzila looked out the window of the infirmary where she was working and saw Dr. Klein, the German doctor in charge of block 25. She ran out and said to him, “Yesterday they took a couple of my nurses to block 25 by mistake. Please give me written permission to take them out.”
“I’m new here," he said. "Please leave me alone.”
I can’t imagine how, in the bowels of Auschwitz, Tzila had the guts to do that. Tzila kept insisting but he refused. On the way back to the infirmary she ran into SS Aufseherin, the head doctor. Tzila said to her, “I just spoke to Dr. Klein and asked him to release a few of my nurses who were taken to Block 25 by mistake. Could you please arrange for their release?"
“Yes, I saw you speaking to him just now," the doctor said to her. "Go to my secretary Bronka and give her the names of the women.” So Tzila went to Bronka and gave her the names of all 20 women. Miraculously, they were all released and brought back to our barrack! When I think about it now, I can’t imagine how, in the bowels of Auschwitz, Tzila had the guts to do that.
Can you talk about how you and Rivkah Horowitz managed to get your friend Balka Grossfeld out of prison?
There was a Gestapo chief named Handke who had become the terror of Krakow. He would drag Jewish men from their homes and arrest them for no reason. Anyone who tried to intervene on their behalf was considered an accomplice and arrested. One day Handke’s thugs stormed into the home of my friend Balka Grossfeld looking for her father. He was not at home so they took Balka instead and put her in prison where she was interrogated. She was there for several months and even her uncle, who was very influential, couldn’t get her out. It got to the point where we couldn’t stand it any more, so Rivkah and I decided to try to get her out by going to speak to Handke ourselves.
One morning we went to the Gestapo building. Once there we saw a sign: “Entry Forbidden to Jews and Dogs.” We entered anyway and the angry guard shouted, “Jews! You don’t see this sign?”
“Yes we see it," I replied, "but Handke needs the information that we’re bringing him.” I don’t know why I said it; God put those words in my mouth. They were always looking for information on people, so this was a good reason to let us in.
They took us to Handke’s office and the secretary took our names then put us in a big safe and locked the door. It was so dark in there and we didn't know what was going to happen. Was she going to take us to Handke or were they going to take us to prison together with Balka?
We waited and waited and finally the steel door opened and they took us to Handke. Rivkah didn’t speak German so I had to address him, but how should I address him? Oberscharfuhrer? Maybe he’s Unterscharfuhrer. But if I call him Unterscharfuhrer and he’s Oberscharfuhrer he might get angry. So I said “Herr Doctor.” That got him. I don’t know what made me say it but he liked the title. He told us to sit down, which was very unusual, and asked me why we’ve come. I began to speak about Balka and he said, “She’s stubborn and refuses to tell me where her father is.”
Once again God put words in my mouth and I made up a story. “She doesn’t know where he is and doesn’t want to know," I told him. "Her father is a drunk. He never comes home. She supports her family with her sewing. She’s so innocent. Please let her go home." Then he asked us a few more questions and told us to go home. Two weeks later Balka was back at the ghetto.
What motivated you and your friends of the Zehnerschaft to act in such a self- sacrificing way at the risk of torture and death?
This is the upbringing and education we had. We were taught to help people no matter what price we had to pay for it. We are here to give. We live to give. As long as you give, you live. You stop giving, you stop living; you’re just existing.
Do you think that your religious convictions had anything to do with your survival?
Yes, I was brought up to believe in God and that whatever He does is for our well being. We pray during difficult times and you know…I don’t have to tell you that sometimes we pray and we don’t get an answer right away. It’s very hard to get through a period like that. But we got through it. There is a verse in Psalms, Chapter 30 which I used to recite at the camps: “Though at night we may lie down crying, in the morning we will awake with song!” We lived through many nights, but we believed that morning would come. We believed that God wanted us to survive; to be witnesses; to tell the world how great our people were during the war. And I did tell the world.
What is your message to young people today?
I often speak to Jewish teenagers and I tell them about those girls and boys who risked their lives to save others; to give someone a piece of bread; or to give away their own piece of bread to someone who was hungrier than they were. I speak to those teenagers and I tell them what greatness they possess; how much goodness, beauty and love they have in them; how much of a will to help others and to bring goodness and justice into the world. I tell them they are just as great as the girls of the Zehnerschaft. I just pray that God won’t test them the way He tested us
How do you think you were tested?
Those people lived through the tortures and they still believed. They were greater than angels.Those Tillies, Tzilas, Rivkahs, those great, great women and men who risked their lives to save others. They were greater than angels. They passed all those tortures and didn’t become beasts like their tormentors. They lived through it and started a new life. They wanted to give, to live, to build a future for the Jewish people. They bore children and grandchildren. Isn’t that great? Aren’t they greater than angels? The angels did not see their parents being tortured. They did not see little children crying for their mothers. They did not see mothers running after the trucks taking their children to the gas chambers. The angels were not tortured…those people were! Those people lived through the tortures and they still believed. They were greater than angels.
What happened to your family?
My family had moved to Slomniki. A Polish neighbor informed the Gestapo that there was a Jewish family living in my house and they came and took my family one Friday while I was working in Krakow. They murdered my parents, my brother Shimshon and his wife Feiga, my brother Berish, my brother Avrum Chaim, my brother Asher, and my only sister Baila Malka. Their lives were brutally cut off in the death camp of Belzec in June 1942. Only my brother Mendek and I survived.
How do you manage to stay happy despite all the pain that you’ve experienced?
I stay happy by making other people happy. I believe that we were put here to make each other happy. Also, I went to a beautiful graduation here in Boro Park at the Beth Yaacov high school. I look and I see all those Jewish children, and I remember that after the war I could hardly walk, but I went from one barrack to another looking for one child. I did not find one child. Thank God, now we see so many wonderful Jewish children graduating, such great dorot (generations). That makes me very happy.
If you could erase all the traumatic memories of the Holocaust from your mind, would you do it?
No I wouldn’t because even in that university of torture I learned a lot. I grew from it. I don’t want to forget it. I want to teach my children about it. I want to tell my children and all the generations to come what is a man – how man can fall deep down into the pit of evil, and how man can raise himself to the loftiest heights and become greater than an angel. I want to tell the children what the “cultured” German nation did to us. I want to teach the children that they should be proud to be Jewish.
Thank you to Dina Reis for introducing me to Pearl Benisch and arranging our interview.
