Burned Parchment and Letters Flying Up to the Heavens

In memory of the martyr, Miriam Zlatani z”l, a young Bais Yaakov teacher

And upon their return, they found Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon, who was sitting and engaging in Torah study and convening assemblies in public, with a Torah scroll placed in his lap.

They brought him to be sentenced, and wrapped him in the Torah scroll, and encircled him with bundles of branches, and they set fire to it. And they brought tufts of wool and soaked them in water, and placed them on his heart, so that his soul should not leave his body quickly, but he would die slowly and painfully.

His daughter said to him: Father, must I see you like this?

Rabbi Ḥanina ben Teradyon said to her: If I alone were being burned, it would be difficult for me, but now that I am burning along with a Torah scroll, He who will seek retribution for the insult accorded to the Torah scroll will also seek retribution for the insult accorded to me.

His students said to him: Our teacher, what do you see? Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon said to them: “I see the parchment burning, but its letters are flying to the heavens.”

(Gemara Avoda Zara 18a)

Miriam daughter of Rabbi Mordechei Mendel and Faiga

Each individual of the six million was a complete world, and each soul surely rests under the wings of the Shechinah (G-d’s presence), and we must not forget any one of them because “in their death, the martyrs commanded us to live.” When we discover, therefore, a new miraculous character of a martyr, a Holocaust victim who sanctified G-d’s Name, we try to study her, to perpetuate her memory for future generations, and to always light a candle in her memory. “These candles are sacred” (Chanuka prayer) and we have no permission to divert attention from them, and all the more so, to forget them even for a moment.

Such is the character of the young teacher Miriam Zlatani from Warsaw, a young wife, a chasidic young woman with a noble soul, a graduate of Bais Yaakov, and a teacher in one of its schools in the Warsaw area.

I found her story at random on the list of names of those who perished, on the Yad Vashem website, and since Providence blessed me with the story of Miriam Zlatani exactly on the eve of the anniversary of the giving of the Torah, I feel that I have a duty to publish her name and raise a proverbial banner in her memory.

And may these words be for the ascension of the soul of Miriam, daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Mendel and Faiga, a great and holy woman who ascended to heaven with simple dedication.

I will copy the story of the teacher Miriam Zlatani from two identical testimonies obtained by Yad Vashem from her nieces.

Testimony from the year 5759 (1998-9):

In 1941, the Nazis ordered her to take a Torah out of the synagogue in her town (a town near Warsaw) and bring it into the street. They poured kerosene on the Torah and forced Miriam, my aunt, to burn it, threatening her.

Miriam refused, and so the Nazis poured kerosene on her and burned her alive with the Torah.

Miriam was burned alive, along with the Torah, and as it states in the aforementioned Gemara, “He who will seek retribution for the insult accorded to the Torah scroll will also seek retribution for the insult accorded to me.”

May the soul of Miriam the daughter of Rabbi Mordechai Mendel and Faiga be bound in the bonds of life.