80 Years Ago in American Jewish Newspapers

Letter from Liberated Belgium

Eighty years ago, in the days when the world was informed of the death of Hitler – may his name be erased – the American newspaper “Morgen Journal” (in Yiddish) published a letter from a soldier named Velvel Scheinberg from Brooklyn, who was stationed in liberated Belgium at the time. The letter is very moving and expresses the feelings of many soldiers in the US Army, observant Jews, whose eyes were filled with terror, and they decided to do everything in their power to build communities and rehabilitate the survivors.

“Ben Amram,” the newspaper’s writer, expresses in his words what many Jews from the United States – the soldiers of the army – felt in their hearts in the face of their encounter with the terrible disaster for the Jews in Europe.

Many of them did not remain indifferent and swore to themselves that they would never leave the communities and the survivors and would forever link their fate with the fate of the Jews of Europe, the remnants of the sword (the survivors), the refugees of the war.

It is interesting and moving to read the letter published in the “Morgen Journal” two days after the world was informed of Hitler’s death. On Lag Ba’Omer 5705 (1945), newspaper headlines around the world were blackened by the sensational news of the death of the devil who destroyed the world, and his hand was still outstretched (examples below). The letter about the Jews of Belgium, survivors of the Holocaust, needs no explanation; its words speak for themselves, and some of them have been translated.

Velvel describes the days before Passover among the survivors:

“They came out of the cellars, the bunkers, and worse hiding places, and went straight to look for kosher food for Passover… After so many days that they had to experience in hiding and in fear of death, after so many ‘disrupted’ holidays, the survivors decided that they would celebrate this holiday with joy and properly.”

The soldier described how the survivors managed to obtain kosher meat:

“Among us there is a soldier who is a baker by profession and he took on the task of baking matzah, but wine was not available. But a Jew, like a Jew, can always manage. They obtained raisins, among other things from the American soldiers they had, they soaked the raisins and thus produced a kosher and good raisin wine.”

After Velvel recounts the process of obtaining the hall and arranging the tables, he describes with excitement the course of the first and second Seder nights:

“It is easy to describe what the surviving Jews have gone through in recent years. Their homes were destroyed, they went into hiding, and their friends and relatives were killed or sent to camps and ghettos. But the survivors – after all they have been through, are full of confidence, and they just want to start all over again and live Jewish life properly.”

“I, for my part, promised the Jews that I would rebuild the destroyed synagogue for them. In the meantime, they pray in some surviving room not far from the synagogue.”

“At the end of the month, I spoke to the hearts of a group of Jewish soldiers and asked them to volunteer for the construction of the synagogue.”

“One of the survivors,” says Welwell, ‘Lamdan’, showed me a passage from the will of Rabbi Yehuda the Chassid printed at the end of Sefer Chassidim, and it says that Germany will be destroyed by Russia. And this is what we are seeing now…” (He is apparently talking about a passage that is cited in part of the will of Rabbi Yehuda the Chassid: “The Tartars will come to the land of Ashkenaz and destroy it, I do not know whether all or half of it.” Y.R.).

Velvel Scheinberg finishes his letter like this:

“I swear I will rebuild the synagogue and Jewish life, or my name is not Scheinberg.”

An excerpt from the same newspaper clipping. “A Beast in Human Form Called Hitler” – an article about the life and death of Satan incarnate.

“Hitler is Dead” – The Forverts (Forward) newspaper the day after Lag Ba’Omer 5705

“Hitler is Dead, May His Name and Memory Be Erased” – Morgen Journal newspaper, the day after Lag Ba’Omer 5705

And in the same newspaper: The First Public Prayer Service in Liberated Bergen-Belsen