Yom Kippur for Jewish Soldiers Captured by the Nazis – And Other Yom Kippur Stories
A column published by a Holocaust survivor, a former officer in the Polish army, on the eve of Yom Kippur, 5706 (1945), eighty years ago
The day was approaching evening and the azure sky of Tel Aviv was slowly turning into a dark blue veil, as I left my house to pray my first “Kol Nidrei” prayer on the soil of the Land of Israel. Not in my imagination, not beyond the days and beyond the dark mountains of Europe, did I foresee this evening – of which the remnants of destroyed European Jewry are now dreaming; no. With my own eyes I see multitudes of my brothers, flocking in their youth and in their old age to the Great Synagogue.
A new world has opened up before me. I am among a crowd of people, whose gaze is that of proud and free people; my heart overflows with joy, seeing our youth, the young men and women, who have no fear of being driven away from here by the Hitleresque-Endekesque gangs [the Endeks were members of an antisemitic political party in Poland]; the young mothers, beautiful and graceful beside their healthy and cheerful babies…
And at this moment, as I pass the guard at the entrance to the synagogue and a beam of light, emanating from within, blinds my eyes – I suddenly remember one solemn evening, a sad and shocking evening in a German prisoner-of-war camp several years ago.
I return in my imagination to that poor Jewish hut, overflowing with people. Heavy leaden clouds have darkened the sky, drizzling rain is falling outside and inside the air is soaked with moss. It is very cold in the body and cold and sad in the soul…
The cursed enemy has the upper hand on all fronts of the war. The swastika is hoisted high on the summit of Mount Elbrus in Kavkaz, the road to Georgia is already under the barrage of German artillery fire and every now and then the radio brings great news accompanied by drums and trumpets: Stalingrad has been captured…
But the spirit of Israel is eternal. Even in the lions’ den, faith did not fail. A handful of us national Jews decided to hold the traditional prayers on the Days of Awe, despite everything: despite the fact that the days were truly “awesome” [in a negative sense], despite the horrific conditions in which we are placed, despite the fact that we were like prey in the claws of the Hitlerite beast.
Officer Mermelstein from Lvov writes down from memory the text of the main prayers, because we do not have a machzor [prayerbook], and I, together with the lawyer Czernka from Warsaw, as the leaders of the prayer, practice in the camp square in appropriate cantor ial verses. Another group arranges the prayer house… Inside the shower of the barracks, where an ark has been set up: a dark blanket on the wall, with a blue-and-white ribbon and a Star of David on it, a cardboard tablet with the Ten Commandments and two candles on the sides.
The Nazi guards are already locking the barrack. The shutters are closed and the flickering light of the fading candles inspires a sense of sadness to the point of horror…
The hall slowly fills up. The Jewish military personnel enter, all dressed in holiday clothes and with their hats on their heads.
A serious and solemn expression is on everyone’s face…
Here comes the dismembered Hamburger from Kalisz, who, in defending Poland against Hitler, lost his right leg for the “homeland”… Here is Dr. Stein, who for the sake of that “homeland” sacrificed his right thigh… They certainly did not even dream that the “homeland”, for which so many Jews sacrificed their lives, would reward them after its liberation in pogroms in the streets of Krakow, Lodz and Lublin…
About fifty people have gathered in the prayer hall. The two oldest members, Captain Herband and Lieutenant Lehrheft from Krakow, stand on either side of the officer-cantor.
And here the cantor quietly begins with a melody of sadness and depression in that old melody of Kol Nidrei – the melody, which in these circumstances shakes all the strings of the soul.
Many of the members burst into tears and thoughts return to their homes, to freedom, to their families and to many, many of their own who are no longer alive: parents, wives, children, brothers…
And the cantor, the lawyer Czernka, his voice grows louder and louder, as if his Kol Nidrei would break the skies and shake the Throne of Glory… As if he wanted his prayer to reach you too, you happy free men…
And here I see you today, the people of the Land of Israel, with tearful eyes, happy that at least some of you have been spared the bitter fate that has been cruel to millions of our brothers in Europe, so that you may be a faithful support to those who survived.
And as one of those whom the Supreme Providence has protected, as one who managed to save his life and pass safely through the hell of poisoned Europe and who has now been blessed with breathing in the atmosphere of freedom, I call upon you, my brothers: Do not be silent until the last of the Jews has left this cruel continent and been brought here.
Memories of Yom Kippur 1940, 85 years ago, on the day the Nazis ordered the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto
The kloiz (the prayer room) was almost full. The cantor prays in a tone and with a melody, and you will not recognize him or the worshippers, for the world is about to descend into chaos. They are dressed in tallis [prayer shawl] and tefillin [phylacteries]. If you close your eyes for a moment and do not look at these people, with their thin faces… and listen only to the hum of their prayer, you will be sure that you have fallen into the house of G-d in a time of peace and tranquility… There are also young people in the camp of worshippers, and their number is not unfortunate [i.e. small]. They too participate in creating an atmosphere of forgetting material things and surrendering the soul to a noble, sublime work, in which the melancholy of the body is of no concern and the suffering of the moment counts as nothing…
I was suddenly overcome with a warmth that I had not felt all the days of the war. Whoever it was, whatever it was, carried me away, shaking me, and placed me in a crowd of medieval Jews, who fought and died for their religion… In the world – murder, violence, robbery and deceit. In the street – cold. In the heart – sorrow and pain. But above all this hovers another power, supreme and eternal, the power of generations that have been and will come.
On October 12, 1940, Yom Kippur, which fell on Shabbat, the Germans announced the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw and determined that the Jews must move there by the end of October. The above passage is taken from the letters of Reuven Ben Shem (Feldschau), and it appears in the documentary film about the Warsaw Ghetto by Ganzach Kiddush Hashem.
Memories of Yom Kippur in Bialystok in 5706 (2945), the first after liberation
On the first Yom Kippur in Bialystok after the war, only forty people attended the prayers in the synagogue. I wondered why several Jewish officers of the Red and Polish armies were standing with a siddur in their hands and praying, and what was a man wearing a cross around his neck doing in the synagogue. To whom was he praying?
I found a room at 39 Kopieczka Street, an old, dark building with broken windows, torn wallpaper, and a kerosene lamp that spread a dim light. The room had a bed without a blanket and a broken table with three and a half legs, which collapsed at the slightest disturbance. I shared the space with a few other Jews and we were immersed in our own memories. Suddenly, someone suggested that we go to the synagogue to participate in the Kol Nidrei prayer (…)
The room was cold because it had no windows. Getting to the synagogue was easy. There was no longer any need to walk through the streets around the buildings. The road was open; one could walk straight to one’s destination without detouring.
We entered a converted synagogue. Inside stood a table facing east, with candles burning on it. Jews, mostly men and about six women, filled the room. All were crying, their faces unshaven, dressed in old, torn clothes. They were between twenty-five and forty-five, including soldiers from the Red and Polish armies, some with medals and others disabled. The one leading the prayer could barely be heard; his voice was drowned in uncontrollable sobbing. The worshippers did not have tallises or the white robes customary for Yom Kippur. But they all bore the wounds of war, choked up, eyes swollen, looking in different directions. I watched a senior Russian officer cry, a siddur pressed to his chest, with war medals on him. (…)
Then I looked at a Jew dressed like a Pole with a big mustache, a Polish hat, boots, and a cross on his chest. Was he Jewish or not? His eyes were swollen from crying. He was not holding a prayer book, only a walking stick. What was he doing here? I guessed that he was completely broken, having suffered terribly. Having never identified with Jews and having converted to Catholicism, he was now standing in the synagogue, crying along with everyone, and answering amen to the prayers. He did not remove the cross, but he was interested in everything Jewish. He was later killed in a Polish pogrom in a town to which ten Jews had returned from the war. Ironically, he died along with the rest.
(Sefer Bialystok, pg. 122)
Dov Levine, Maariv newspaper, Yom Kippur eve, 40 years since the first Yom Kippur following liberation.
And from the same newspaper clipping, David Levin’s testimony about a woman who interrupted the Yom Kippur prayers with her screams – urging the congregrants to search for Jewish children who had been in hiding. The woman, Tzila Wildstein, established a children’s home for these children
