לז"נ ר' יצחק עמרם אליהו By Erev Rosh
Hashanah 1944, there were more than 6,000 boys in the camp. The Nazis
considered them superfluous to the German war machine, and they decided to
send 1,400 boys to the ovens. The boys were randomly selected and locked in a
barrack while waiting for extermination. I was lucky. A kapo warned me and
two friends to stay away while the boys were being caught for the ovens. Rav Tzvi Hirsch
Meisels, the Veitzener Dayan, was brought to our camp a few weeks before this
happened, along with his 15-year-old son. Somehow, Rav Meisels had a shofar.
How can I describe the emotions as we gathered to say our Rosh Hashanah
tefillos and hear the tekios? Rav Meisels began with words of chizuk,
encouragement. Although I can’t recount the entire derashah, I remember him
saying “Bakeseh l’yom chageinu — everything is covered and hidden. What
will happen, only the Eibeshter knows.” The condemned boys
heard about Rav Meisels’s tekios and begged him to blow shofar in their
barracks too. It was terrible to watch the Dayan’s son beg his father not to
go. He feared his father would be caught and killed. “Please, Father, you are
all I have,” he pleaded. “The Ribbono shel Olam doesn’t ask this of you.” Rav Meisels said it
wasn’t required to risk one’s life, but he knew that in a place like
Auschwitz his life would probably soon come to an end anyway, and this
mitzvah was paramount to any other consideration. After being smuggled into
the barracks by a kind kapo, Rav Meisels blew all 100 tekios for the boys.
One of the boys shouted that Rav Meisels should be blessed with long years,
to which all the boys answered, amid many tears, “Amen.” All the condemned boys
perished the next day. B’chasdei Hashem, both the Dayan and his son survived
the war. (Originally Featured
in Mishpacha Issue 678) |
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