My Waze is speaking to me…in Hebrew!
Since I returned from a recent trip to Israel, I have been receiving my driving directions in Hebrew. I haven’t changed it back yet. It is comforting to me to be told how to take the next steps in my journey in the language of my People.
This week, some of my Israeli family took a journey of their own. They organized a “roots” trip to Holland to follow the trek their parents took which put them at the mercy of the Nazis during WWII.
It all began with my grandfather. He and his family lived in Munich, Germany.
In 1933 Dachau, was opened. Jews who had been interrogated and murdered were sent back to the Jewish community in Munich in sealed coffins. My grandfather who participated in the ritual Jewish burial society, opened the coffins to prepare the bodies and was horrified by the signs of torture he saw. He journeyed to Vienna to take counsel from a Hasidic Rabbi with whom he was acquainted. The Rabbi told my grandfather that terrible things would be happening in Germany and said he should travel immediately to Palestine, as Israel was then known, and send for the family from there. My grandfather heeded this advice and so my Father and his siblings moved to Palestine.
Shortly after their arrival, my aunt Mali, married a rabbi and the two of them were sent in 1935 to Holland to run an educational center which prepared young people to make Aliya, to move to Palestine. They lived in a village called Enschede. The first three of their nine children were born there and they successfully taught and supported the young people in their care.
Then the Nazis invaded.
In 1940, my Uncle was arrested. Because he had British papers, he was taken to a POW camp. My Aunt did the unthinkable and tried to get her husband released by the Nazis. She related that the Nazi governor did not think she was Jewish because she went to the “lions den”. She would always say it was the chutzpah that she brought with her from the Land of Israel that gave her strength. For the next two years she was responsible for the students and her children.
Due to her quick wits and impeccable German, she managed to disperse the students safely. She encountered Nazi patrols and was able to talk her way out of many precarious situations.
She was called to the Gestapo headquarters twice, a place from which Jews did not escape, yet she managed to get away both times.
Finally the Nazis caught up with her and she and her three young boys, all under the age of 5, were taken to Westerbork. This camp
was a staging ground for the deportation of Jews to other concentration camps for extermination. The vast majority were sent to Auschwitz.
Almost all of the 95,000 people sent to the extermination camps were killed upon arrival.
It was a one way journey. It was a trek with a diabolical destination.
But, a great miracle occurred.
Due to the fact that my brave and feisty Aunt held a passport from Palestine, and therefore she had British papers.
These documents proved to be lifesaving.
The German Templer Society was a Christian group whose philosophy included the imminent arrival of their Savior in Jerusalem. The Society established a number of German Templar colonies in Palestine. The members of this groups were interned by the British and in an exchange deal brokered by the governments of Germany and Great Britain, Templars were traded for British citizens who were incarcerated by the Nazi regime.
Similar to the Schindler list, there is a typed list of exchanged prisoners released in 1942 during the height of the Nazi killing machine.
Numbers 8,9,10 and 11 are the names of my Aunt Mali and her three boys.
The miracles are too numerous to count.
This week, 40 of the hundreds of descendants of my Aunt and Uncle retraced all their steps on Dutch soil.
They sang, and recited Kaddish and studied Torah and waved Israeli flags. And amongst them, my cousin, the oldest of the three sons, made a special blessing.
He stood at the gates of Westerbork and intoned a blessing which thanks Gd for a miracle that occurred to him
in that place.
For he was one of the minuscule few whose journey continued to life, and not to death.
This week’s Torah portions of Chukat and Balak take place almost 40 years after the last Torah portion. In the intervening years, the Jewish people went on a long and very difficult journey. But those events are not chronicled.
Each of us goes on our own journey and what happens to us during that time, helps mold us in the people we become.
In Chukat we hear of the death of Miriam, who has led and inspired the Jewish people throughout the darkest of times. Her belief, courage and faith that there were better days ahead, that a redemption would come, carried her people.
In her merit the nation was provided with water through their desert travails.
She personified the concept of keeping faith, even in the face of tragedy or death.
We all carry that DNA within us.
My Aunt Mali certainly did.
In article written about her after her death at the age of 103, the author says her holocaust testimony for Yad VShem
“reveals an extraordinary woman-resourceful, courageous, determined and faith driven.”
When we journey on the paths of life, we need to find powerful role models who will help us map a route which will help us access our best selves.
That kind of inspiration has a universal language all of its own, and it will help us reach our destination, even though it may take longer than we had initially hoped.
It’s all about finding the good, even if we have to recalculate!
Shabbat Shalom and so much love!