Shema Yisrael ”

placed it back in the ark, where it remains to this day. Despite the small size of the congregation, the appeal raised over $10,000, an immense sum, yet so pitifully small compared to the need. | KALIVER REBBE | The Power of Faith – The Power of “ Shema Yisrael ” he “final solution” of the Jewish question in Hungary got underway with a speed and efficiency that Tsurprised even the Germans: between mid-April and late May 1944, practically the entire Jewish population of the Hungarian countryside was ghettoized and, in the largest deportation operation in the history of the Holocaust, between May 15 and July 9, over 437,000 people had been transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The speed with which the Hungarian authorities cast out Jews from society, then robbed, segregated and deported them, was unprecedented in the entire history of the Holocaust. Menachem Mendel Taub (the current Kaliver Rebbe living in Bnei Brak) was only twenty-one years of age when he found himself on a transport to Auschwitz. He arrived there, starving and thirsty, on May 25, three days before the festival of Shavuos was to begin. The sight that greeted him was an enduring one; he never fails to mention it when he speaks publicly about his ordeal in the camps. “I will never forget the sight that met my eyes when we came to Auschwitz, three days before Shavuos. I saw, revealed before me, the eternal core of Am Yisrael, unquenchable, even though all of the forces in the universe strive against it.” 246 * Heroes Of Faith The rebbe relates that as they exited the trains, disoriented and bewildered, each group of one thousand Jews was surrounded and enclosed by electrified barbed-wire fences. One touch would kill a man on the spot. Indeed, they saw prone bodies lying at the base of the fence and it was quite obvious that these people had chosen to end their wretched existence and meet their Maker by touching the electrified fence. Suddenly, they noticed a commotion. A number of men were struggling to reach a certain object which was just beyond the fence. With as much caution as they could muster, they were reaching through the wire to try to grab a piece of paper. R’ Menachem Mendel did not understand what was happening and asked what they were doing. Someone told him that beyond the electric fence, they had spotted a page of a machzor with the poem of Akdamus (a liturgical poem read on Shavuos) printed on it, and the men were trying to reach through the fence and get hold of it. The sight made an incredible impression on the future Kaliver Rebbe. He lifted up his eyes to heaven and said: “Master of the Universe, who is like Your people, Yisrael? They are a unique nation on earth!” Jews in such a terrible situation, with death staring them in the face; yet at that very moment their faith moved them to risk their lives to get a single page of praise to Hashem. R’ Menachem Mendel did not stay in Auschwitz for very long. He was transferred to what was once the Warsaw ghetto, where the Nazis required strong, healthy prisoners to clear away the ruins of the decimated ghetto (the Klausenberger Rebbe was also among this group). There were no gas chambers or crematorium there, but frequently, for the amusement of the Nazis, men were thrown alive into Devastation and Destruction * 247 bonfires, particularly anyone who was worn down and could no longer work. Once, a group of four men, R’ Menachem Mendel among them, was selected to be tossed into the flames. Facing death, he once again looked upward and declared, “What will my last ‘Shema Yisrael ’ on this world add to You? Master of the World, give me life and save me, and I will bring Your ‘ Shema Yisrael ’ to so many.” He had no doubts about Hashem’s justice, no complaints to lay before His throne. Rather, he knew, with the strong faith that his father and grandfathers had imbued in him, that he was simply giving back his soul to the One Who had put it within him. But lo and behold, a miracle occurred just then. The gate opened, and a group of S.S. officers entered, searching for a few more men to do some extra work. In the momentary confusion that ensued, R’ Menachem Mendel said to the other three men, “Let’s run for it!” They argued, “They will shoot us if we run,” but R’ Menachem Mendel insisted, “And if we stay, will it be any better for us?” So they ran for shelter, and somehow managed to stay alive. From Warsaw, he was subsequently transferred, first to Breslau and then to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His faith in the Al-mighty never diminished. He relates that when he was in one of the forced labor camps, the Nazis ordered him, as a form of abuse, to take a horse-drawn wagon loaded with garbage and drive it in the middle of the night to a neighboring camp several kilometers away. It was a black and moonless night, and there was no defined road leading to the other camp. How would he be able to stay on the road without veering off and getting lost? The German officer looked at him menacingly, as if to say: that is not my problem; that is your problem! He was ordered to drop off the foul-smelling load and return immediately. “And if you 248 * Heroes Of Faith are not back by daybreak...” The sentence wasn’t completed but the implication was understood loud and clear. With no choice, R’ Menachem Mendel took the wagon and began the impossible journey. Not being adept at wagon- driving and barely able to see the road in front of him, the inevitable came to pass: after going only a short way, the wagon overturned on the bumpy terrain. He was thrown to the ground, and the wagon tilted on its side. He wasn’t hurt – but he was scared. Sitting on the ground, he took stock of his situation. He was far from his family, far from his home, far from his friends. But right then and there, he reminded himself that Hashem, the Master of the Universe, was still there, right with him. There is no place that is without Him. Musical person that he was, he remembered a Yom Tov melody that his father, the previous Kaliver Rebbe, used to sing in his house, and the tears began to flow. He sat on the ground and sang and wept. Later, the Kaliver Rebbe would recount, “I can honestly say that I wish people would cry like that on Yom Kippur.” With the tune on his lips, the Kaliver Rebbe stood up and sprang into action. To this day, he maintains that he does not know how he had the strength to do it – he has no idea even how it happened; beyond any shadow of a doubt, it was the all-powerful hand of Hashem that did it. Within minutes, the heavy wagon was up on its wheels, the garbage was loaded back on top of it, and he was in the driver’s seat, moving toward his destination. It was as if the wagon was driving itself! Indeed, he accomplished his mission and arrived back at daybreak – it was daybreak, he would always say, for both his body and soul – and the villains could not believe their eyes. Devastation and Destruction * 249 Only with faith and stubbornly clinging to Hashem, only taking the example of the righteous men who walked in His way no matter what happened – that is what saved the Jews in those days. R’ Menachem Mendel would say: “It seems to me that such incidents (and thousands of such events occurred during the Holocaust) should be capable of destroying the power of the Heavenly adversary and of awakening mercy in Heaven for all of Klal Yisrael. I do not think that even the angels in heaven believed that after all the calumnies against Am Yisrael during the war, and after all the bloodshed and the agonizing death of millions – that after all this the Jewish people would still stand forth as the torchbearers of faith in G-d, declaring, ‘Despite it all, we have not forgotten Your Name!’ With perfect faith we still shout from the depths of our hearts, ‘ Shema Yisrael !’” | R’ AVRAHAM JUNGREIS | Administering to His Flock he city of Szeged was the second largest city in Hungary at the beginning of the war. With the 1941 Tinvasion of Yugoslavia, the Germans acquired large copper mines in the area of Bor. As the majority of Yugoslav Jews were already annihilated by 1942 and all Serbs were seen as potential partisans, the Germans turned to Hungary for a slave labor force. The Hungarian government agreed to provide the requested contingent and the first companies left for Bor in the summer of 1943. By the summer of 1944, approximately six thousand Hungarian servicemen were sent to the copper mines. Most of these laborers were Jewish boys who were conscripted into slave labor battalions, which 250 * Heroes Of Faith.

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