Rabbi Meyer Birnbaum served as an officer in the army during World War II, fought against the Nazis and was among the liberators of Jews from the Nazis, particularly from the Buchenwald camp.
When the war broke out, Rabbi Birnbaum was a young man of about twenty, a resident of Brooklyn. He received a draft order for the US Army to his home, and despite his misgivings and understandable desire not to enlist, he was eventually drafted into the army and sent to the battlefields.
On the eve of his enlistment, he spoke with Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner z”l, to whom he was close. “Every day, recite Psalms chapter 91 at least twenty times – ‘He who sits in the shelter of the Most High’ – and G-d willing you will return home safe and sound,” encouraged Rabbi Hutner. Despite this, Birnbaum prepared a will in which he instructed that if, G-d forbid, he did not return from the war – his money should be transferred to the yeshiva of the rabbi.
In the army, Birnbaum had to deal with many difficulties, which stemmed from his being Torah and mitzvah observant in a non-Jewish environment. However, his commanders recognized the high potential inherent in him, and insisted on sending him to an accelerated officer course at the officer school. He then commanded several units and participated in five campaigns, one of which was the famous invasion of the Allied forces in Normandy.
Towards the end of the war, his unit arrived in Germany and he was one of the first soldiers to enter the chain of camps that bore the general name “Buchenwald.” There he was subjected to a series of harrowing and chilling experiences, some of which are documented in photographs he took himself and published in his autobiography, “Lieutenant Birnbaum.”
Some time after entering the camp, he was deeply effected by the horror that unfolded before his eyes, and its monstrous dimensions only then dawned on him. On one occasion, as he was sitting in his tent preparing a military report, one of the soldiers approached him and informed him that two young Germans wanted to talk to him. “Take the Germans to the forest and make sure there are two less anti-Semites in the world!” Birnbaum responded angrily, without batting an eyelid.
A minute later the soldier returned to him. “The two are asking if you know that they are Jews,” he said. A shock gripped him at the soldier’s words. With one hasty thought and one hasty statement, he almost brought about the elimination of two of his Jewish brothers!
He stood up and stormed out of the tent to meet the two young men. “You spoke German to me!” the soldier, who at first thought they were Germans, defended himself. “In what language did you want us to speak to you, perhaps in Yiddish?! You are not Jewish, so we spoke to you in German!” the two replied.
Meyer sent the soldier on his way and began talking to the two. They were two chassidic boys, Yossel and Leibel Bornstein. They were looking for a Jew among the soldiers, and when they learned that one of the commanders was Jewish, they wanted to meet him.
Meyer burst into tears and asked for their forgiveness for having just a minute ago wanted to eliminate them. They had one wish: to put on tefillin. He offered them his tefillin, but they did not know how to put them on. When the war broke out, they were under bar mitzvah age, and had not seen tefillin since. With great excitement, he helped them put on tefillin. Afterwards, he let them feast their hearts out on cookies and sardines.
Excerpted from an article originally published in Hebrew on BeChadrei Charedim.
