The joy of the first day of Chanukah this year was dimmed with shock and grief over the massacre in Australia, when dozens of Jews were murdered and wounded. The latest in a string of attacks on Jews and Jewish sites in cities across the world, this atrocity was said to be a direct result of Australian government policies that have emboldened Iran-backed terrorists.
In a country where Muslims outnumber Jews eight to one, the government panders to pro-Hamas Jew-haters, allowing rioters to take over the streets with calls to “globalize the intifada.”
Government leaders have ratcheted up hostility toward Israel, accusing it of genocide, pressing for “war crimes” investigations, and endorsing “from the river to the sea”—a call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
These same leaders simultaneously profess to be shocked at the murder and violence unleashed against Jews in their midst—actions they have themselves enabled and stoked.
So, it is with heartache over the latest victims of violent antisemitism that Jews ushered in the holy festival of Chanukah, drawing strength from that earliest Chanukah when miracles lit up the night, sending sparks of comfort down the corridors of time.
Testimony in a Tattered Notebook
Like meteors blazing across a darkened sky, those sparks still kindle Jewish hearts across generations of exile. One such “shooting star” pierced the darkness of a Nazi slave-labor camp near Vienna eighty years ago, as Jewish prisoners sensed Chanukah drawing near.
Their story is told in the gripping Holocaust journal of a prominent Hungarian rov and dayan, Rav Moshe Nosson Nota Lemberger, who was a key participant of this group. What gives his account its unique authenticity is that it was written as the events unfolded, rather than reconstructed months or years later from memory.
In the pages of a tattered notebook the rabbi found at the slave labor site, he recorded the ordeals that he and many thousands of Jews from several communities in Hungary endured after the Nazis occupied Hungary. These barbarians with eager help from the Hungarian Iron Cross execution squads, deported and murdered over a half million Jews, while tens of thousands more were put to work as slave laborers or sent on death marches.
The rov’s notebook entries describe his experiences in slave labor camps, in a death march to Bergen Belsen and later to Theresienstadt. He also used the notebook to record the divrei Torah and chiddushim he shared with his fellow prisoners in the camps, to uplift spirits and strengthen faith.
“We studied the daily portion of Chok L’Yisroel. I had all five sections in a single volume that I packed in my knapsack when we were driven from our home in Hungary,” the rov wrote, going on to detail his shiurim. He survived the war along with his writings through a string of miracles, and published the extraordinary account as a hakdomah to his post-war sefer, Klai Golah.
Throughout his writings, Rabbi Lemberger expresses his gratitude to the Borei Olam for the incredible acts of Hashgacha Protis that brought him out of the inferno. His wartime chronicle was later reprinted in a collection of autobiographical sketches taken from the hakdamos of various seforim authored by rabbonim who survived the Holocaust.
These haunting accounts were collected and edited by Esther Farbstein and published by ArtScroll in a unique volume: Forgotten Memoirs; Moving Personal Accounts from Rabbis Who Survived the Holocaust.
Shabbos, Kashrus in Captivity
In his preface, Rav Lemberger first writes of how, as Chanukah approached in 1943, he and hundreds of other prisoners were deported to a slave labor camp near Vienna, where they were forced to chop down trees in the forests all day long.
From his description of the grueling labor and starvation, the reader gains insight into the rov’s determination to observe Shabbos and kashrus in the labor camps, while taking care not to endanger life.
“We were divided into teams of five people, including women and teenage boys,” he writes. “We sawed the trees into logs one meter in length and piled them seven meters high. On Shabbos I showed the teams how to subtract a certain amount from the required length, so least we would not violate the issur of intentionally cutting a precise length on Shabbos.
He goes on to detail how the prisoners subsisted on fifteen grams of bread a day, one cup of fake black “coffee,” a small portion of beans, and on Sundays, some potatoes. “Some of us survived on much less as we abstained the entire time from the cooked food,” the rov writes. “We ate only the bread and the water with some herbs from the forest to somewhat quiet our hunger pains.”
The kashrus problem, he explains, was not only the utensils which were used to prepare non-kosher food for the soldiers. “Some strings of non-kosher meat were visible among the cooked beans, only one part in thousands. But they were recognizable and thus forbidden.”
The journal goes on to describe how part of the group was taken out of the forests and ordered to transfer heavy furniture and appliances from apartments that had been bombed. This work was even more brutal than chopping down trees for long hours in frigid temperatures.
“We hauled bathtubs, heavy kitchen cupboards and backbreaking ovens down several stories and lifted them into cars,” Rav Lemberger recounted. “After they were transported to their new location, we had to haul them into the new apartments. This was torture for people already exhausted from hard labor and deprived of food and sleep. Descending stairs with weighty loads strapped around our necks, we often felt our life’s force about to expire.”
Yearning For Chanukah Licht
The journal recounts how, as Chanukah approached, the prisoners yearned for a way to perform the mitzvah of ner Chanukah. “Many of the Jews in our camp had been saving the tiny margarine ration distributed every Sunday, hoping to use it to light Chanukah licht. Those who were working in factories took risks hiding congealed oil someplace on their bodies and bringing it to the camp.”
“We felt a powerful inner impulse to perform a mitzvah and did not ponder whether halacha required us to endanger ourselves,” the rov wrote.
On erev Chanukah, he and his group were ordered to remove the contents of an artist’s studio on the top floor of an apartment building. The men climbed up and down five stories more than 40 times that day, carrying paintings, canvases and paint jars, until their legs swelled and each step was excruciating. But fear of punishment for resting on the job drove them on.
At the point of collapse, one of the men stumbled on a small can of oil. That miraculous find transformed the group’s despair to soaring happiness. “How great was our joy when we came across this little tin, just like in the neis Chanukah!” Rav Lemberger wrote. “Someone carefully hid it under his armpit, fully aware that the punishment for such a ‘crime’ was an immediate death sentence.”
Another “small” miracle unfolded as they searched the basement of their forced labor camp and came upon ceramic flowerpot bottoms in the shape of candleholders.
“I advised the group that because of sakonas nefoshos, we could all light together; there was no need to light additional candles which would expose everyone to great danger. But who among us was willing to renounce any part of this mitzvah? Not a one.”
The author captures the exhilaration of the moment they kindled Chanukah licht, feeling that the brocha, she’osa nissim spoke directly to their anguished hearts.
“Who can find words to convey the overwhelming emotion we felt? Every moment we remained alive was a miracle. And here we were performing a precious mitzvah that was logically impossible in our situation… Chasof zeroa kodshecha came out as a passionate cry, a desperate plea for the yeshua to arrive in a flash.”
Two Sisters, Drops of Oil –and a Miracle
The author goes on to relate another Chanukah miracle that day that rescued two sisters who had slipped away from their worksite to bring a small tin of smuggled oil to their father, a member of Rav Lemberger’s group.
‘My precious daughters, don’t risk your lives,’ their father had told them. But they came anyway with the precious drops of oil for lighting their father’s makeshift menorah. Fearful of being caught and killed, they had raced back to their workplace—a Nazi gun factory hidden in the forest.
Approaching the factory, the girls hesitantly left the protection of the woods, looking for a way to enter without being seen by their SS tormentors. Clutching each other fearfully as they advanced, they were met with a shocking sight.
In the few minutes they had been away, Allied bombers had sighted the factory through the trees and had scored a direct hit. The guards they had dreaded lay bloodied and lifeless in the rubble.
The road to freedom might still be a long way off. But glancing heavenward in gratitude, the sisters knew they would survive to tell the story of their miraculous reprieve.
***
Redemption through Alef-Bais
Rav Lemberger survived a death march to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1944. Over 140,000 Jews were imprisoned in this camp during the war, with over 35,000 murdered by the Nazis.
In May, 1944, the camp was liberated by the Russians and the rov was joyously reunited with his rebbetzin and many of their children who had survived in hiding. The family embarked on a journey back to their hometown of Mako in Hungary, where they hoped to find surviving family members and friends.
The rov’s Holocaust-era sefer, Klai Golah, contains an Afterword, written by his sons, that recounts a striking incident that took place in Pressburg where the family stopped to spend their first Shabbos in freedom. The Soviet army who then occupied Pressburg had issued orders that no one could travel in the city without “certificates of liberation” which testified that the card-bearers were not Germans in disguise. Anyone caught without the card could be executed or sent to Siberia without a trial or even an investigation.
Despite the danger, Rav Lemberger could not bring himself to violate Shabbos on his first Shabbos in freedom. He left his card at his apartment when he went to shul Friday night, accompanied by a friend. The two were caught by a Soviet officer who suspected them of being German spies.
The officer turned a deaf ear to all their attempts to prove they were Jews. The two rabbonim cited passages from the Talmud and Rambam and described Jewish laws and customs, but the officer remained unconvinced.
“You could be Germans trained in Jewish subjects and language in order to infiltrate Jewish communities and identify their leaders. That’s what the cursed Germans actually did,” the officer lashed out.
The rov asked for an investigation so the two men could prove their innocence; they were known by many survivors in Pressburg who would readily vouch for them. But this request was ignored. The walls of the jail echoed with the jeers of other inmates. “This one just got here and wants to appear before a judge? He’ll find out that you rot in jail before you ever get to court.”
The next morning, the officer confronted the disheartened rabbis with a challenge he was sure they couldn’t meet.
“Every so-called proof you’ve brought is also known by the Germans and it won’t help you. If you’re really Jewish, you would know something that every Jewish child knows but no German spy would ever think of learning. Even I know it,” the officer added, “because I’m Jewish by birth.”
The rabbis were dumbfounded. “What is it?” Rav Lemberger asked.
“It’s the Hebrew alphabet sung to a special tune with movements, in a very charming way,” the officer said.
The two rabbis began fervently chanting the alef-bais in the time-honored niggun that Jewish children in European shtetlach had sung over generations.
The Russian officer stared at them as they finished. “No non-Jew could recite this chant and in such a moving way,” he said grudgingly. “You must really be Jews after all.”
Somewhat abashed, he signaled to a guard. “These men are hereby released!”
***
When Faith Overpowers Destiny
Rav Lemberger discusses in his sefer the almost supernatural force that pushed ordinary Jews past the limits of what was normally possible, and inspired their devotion to perform mitzvos even when exempt.
He writes that this heroism sprang from a deep-rooted belief that mesiras nefesh for Torah can kindle a spiritual force that is capable of rescinding an evil decree.
In addition, “the powerful desire to connect to one’s ancestors and to previous generations of pious Jews,” triggers a surge of faith in a seemingly hopeless situation, the rov taught. That in turns elicits zechus avos that can alter destiny.
Other survivors have described this phenomenon—a surge of faith welling up in the Jewish soul at a moment of great suffering that enabled them to persevere. Mrs. Rivka Kuper, one of the witnesses at the 1961 Eichmann trial, described this poignant experience in her testimony before the court.
Before quoting her remarks, here is a thumbnail sketch of Rivka, an “ordinary” Jewish girl, based on biographical information from the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a Yad Vashem interview:
Born in Krakow, Poland, Rivka was 19 when the war broke out. Interned in the Krakow ghetto in 1941, she and her husband Dolek Liebskind were members of the Krakow religious Zionist underground. Rivka helped to organize youth programs and study groups to strengthen Jewish prayer, practice and beliefs.
She also took part in operations that supplied forged papers permitting Jews to leave the ghetto on various pretexts. The Gestapo arrested her in November, 1942, tortured her and sent her to Auschwitz. There, Rivka was put to work in drainage operations; all day she stood in water up to her hips and dug canals.
While in Auschwitz, Rivka managed to maintain communication with the Jewish underground, but she was caught passing information out of the camp and transferred to the Auschwitz Strafkommando (penal detachment). Conditions in this unit were horrendous. Deprived of food and sleep, she was forced to perform hard labor in pouring rain and snow.
While in prison, Kuper learned her husband died in an underground operation to acquire arms. Weakened and sick with typhus, she evaded the gas chambers only by a miracle. Friends managed to smuggle her onto a transport taking prisoners to a different labor camp. As the Russians approached, she and surviving inmates were marched from one labor camp to another, finally ending up in Hamburg where they were liberated, barely alive.
Shabbos Licht in Gehinnom
Below are excerpts from Rivka’s testimony at the 1961 Eichmann trial:
“When we arrived on the eighteenth of January, 1943 we were put into the barracks at Birkenau,” she told the courtroom. “They had previously been horse stables… Incredibly, among the first things we sought were two remnants of candles. Friday night we gathered together on the top tier of our barrack. There were then about ten or twelve of us…We lit the candles and began quietly to sing zemiros.
“Suddenly we heard choked sobbing from the tiers of bunks all around us. At first we were frightened; then we understood. Jewish women who had been imprisoned months, some of them for years, gathered around us, listening to us sing. Some asked us if they might also recite the brocha over the candles…
“From then on while in Auschwitz, every Shabbos we lit candles. We had no bread—but we always managed to get the candles and bentch licht. And so it was on all moadim… We clung to our faith. We fasted on Yom Kippur…True, we had no matzah on Pesach, but we traded our rations with the other prisoners for potatoes, so that we could at least fulfill the mitzvah of not eating chometz.”
After the war, Rivka was taken to Sweden where she slowly recovered. In 1947, she made the journey to the shores of Palestine-Israel, hoping to evade the British, but she and her fellow passengers were arrested and interned in Cyprus.
In 1948, following the War of Independence, Rivka finally arrived in Israel, the land of her dreams. There she met Sholom Kuper, a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto. They married and together raised a family in the sacred traditions they had fought so hard to uphold.
