The following declaration typifies the power of faith as a position in this world.
‘Listen to me, brothers and sisters … . We are the children of the people of God. We must not rebel against the ways of the Lord. These, our sufferings are meant to precede the coming of the Messiah. If it was decreed that we should be the victims of the Messianic throes, that we should go up in flames to herald the redemption, then we should consider ourselves fortunate to have this privilege. Our ashes will serve to cleanse the people of Israel who will remain, and our death will hasten the day when the Messiah will appear. Therefore, brothers and sisters, let not your spirit falter. As you walk into the gas chambers, do not weep but rejoice.’33
It would not be unreasonable to assume that such imagery might have had a positive effect in the general human environment of sunken, dull eyes, the disintegration of communication, withdrawal into the self, apathy in the face of assault and deadness in emotional reactivity. It is not unusual, for example, in clinical literature to find descriptions of abused children whose psychological universes resemble those of the inmates of the ghettos and camps. If we see such examples as carrying Torah scrolls, singing religious songs, rabbinical utterance, as action responding to despair (uttering sacred words in the Talmud is considered a form of action), then these forms of spiritual protest, rather than being ineffective, appear as a last, desperate effort to lift a psychically disoriented community out of radical emotional withdrawal and catatonic displacement.
Kiddush haShem was not a response that posed real, political consequences, like, for example, Mahatma Gandhi’s passive resistance, sitting down in front of armed troops; but not even underground fighters or partisans could transform the political environment of genocide and the violence of the Final Solution. To have done that would have required a Jewish political organization, across Europe, far stronger and with far more political authority and access to weapons than existed among the splinter groups of Jewish theological and secular factionalism. The spiritual reliance on sanctified words as a response to brutalization evolved as an active effort to utter what amounts to a silent ‘no,’ a passive resistance taking place entirely within an oppressed community and invisible to the aggressor. And in analyzing the Jewish response to the Germans, it is essential to keep in mind the relentless assault against men, women, children and infants, who possessed no political language or resistance.
Rabbi Chaim Ozer urges students fleeing from the Nazis to ‘dedicate yourself to studying diligently … in this time of churban [disaster], the sounds of Torah study have been dimmed. It is our obligation, we who still have the ability to pursue our studies, to dedicate ourselves to it with added energy and diligence.’34 Here he addresses spirit, not politics – not the political reality of annihilation, but a spiritual universe, which prayer affirms, saving souls from extinction. Hasidic rabbis believed God would rescue the Jews; but in the absence of God’s rescue efforts, Kiddush haShem replaced the coming of the Messiah. Faith struggling against reality, verbal injunctions like ‘don’t open your mouth to Satan,’35 prayer recitations, or repetitive moments like ‘springing’ on one’s toes36 before attempting to jump from a transport train, were thought to have power. Faith sanctified God’s goodness, no matter what the external events revealed. Or, according to Rabbi Ozer: ‘When a battle is waged against Jews, it is also being waged against haShem and against Torah – can there be any doubt, then, as to which side will persevere in the end?’37
There is no evidence to suggest that younger Jews became more religious during the Holocaust, although some took considerable risks in attempting to observe traditional holidays such as Yom Kippur or Passover. Cultural identity could be reinforced and affirmed, although ritual practices like bathing in the mikvah, lighting candles, baking matzah at Passover were not the same as theological practice, for example, the study of Torah. That dimension of faith, study as action, seemed to intensify in some ghettos such as Kovno.
Martyrdom for God has a long tradition in Jewish history; it is central to the teachings of the Talmud. ‘You may kill my body, but not my soul.’ Some survivors, however, felt differently. Abraham K.: ‘I hated the orthodox rabbis. They sat in their studies and rendered judgments; we came to them and asked for their help, money, or influence with the Judenrat in helping the resistance. They just said nothing in the Torah could justify that course of action.’
It is doubtful, however, if financial support for buying weapons would have drawn more religious Jews into the fold of active partisan or underground movements. While younger Jews tended to be more mobile, and secular Jews less inclined to religious dress, habits and practice, the Germans made no distinction about who was to be annihilated. No belief, concept or class status assured a greater probability of survival. Surviving in the ghettos depended mostly on contingency, will and the ability to withstand disease and starvation and avoid the omnipresent selections and random killing that made the difference between life and death. But for those who perished, the theology of Kiddush haShem may have made a difference. History, tradition, culture and theology made it impossible for the Jewish community to make the leap from Kiddush haShem to political resistance. So sacrifice for God and the historical community took on extraordinary significance. Rabbinical authority followed the ancient words of Maimonides: ‘When Israel is forced to abolish their religion or one of the precepts, then it is the duty of the Jew to suffer death and not violate even any of the other commandments, whether the coercion takes place in the presence of ten Jews or in the presence of non-Jews.’38 To die for Israel, therefore, is purposive, meaningful. ‘If one is enjoined to die and not to commit the transgression and suffers death and did not transgress, behold, he has sanctified the Name of God.’39 Partisans, underground fighters, of course, saw it differently. But outside the gas chambers, parents made children recite Viddui, confession of sin, to be in proper spiritual accordance with the sanctification of the Name of God.
It would then be wrong to see Kiddush haShem as symptomatic of cultural abjection or psychological death. People believed God would eventually take revenge; to be able to utter the name of the Lord on the threshold of the gas chambers, to project a consciousness of faith in the face of the enemy, suggests an aspect of the Jewish self that, given the presence of German power and its effects, should be accorded respect as a form of resistance. Ritual practice continued, on rare occasions, even in the death camps; for example, tfilin became prized articles of possession in Auschwitz, usually worth three or four portions of food in trade. A survivor remembers a Succah erected in a corner of a camp workshop; others recall matzah prepared during Passover, a shophar blown during Rosh haShanah.
But side by side with Kiddush haShem is the story of emptied-out selves, the diaries describing the catatonic, the aimless wanderings in the street, the lost and homeless, those whose being-in-the-world progressively comes to resemble madness, forms of human behavior that in a more ‘normal’ environment would be labeled psychotic or dissociated. That too needs to be acknowledged. Facing total psychological collapse, some rabbis counseled active resistance; for example, Rabbi Yitzhak Nissenbaum of Warsaw exhorted Jews to survive and resist the oppressors. ‘Jews should do everything – by flight or bribery – to live.’40 A somewhat different picture was given to me by a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, David L.: ‘Yes, one or two rabbis, after the fall of 1942, counseled resistance; but the vast majority did not. Most rabbis were dead by summer of 1942.’
Law and Spirit in Terrible Times
With a long tradition in Judaism, responsa (rabbinical judgments on issues pertaining to moral and community life) and their commentary constitute much of Talmudic content. During the Holocaust, rabbis wrote judgments regarding marriages, living arrangements, the burial of the dead and attendance at burials; they recited prayers at funerals, presided over ceremonial occasions, officiated in the shul, and supervised the slaughtering of animals for meat. The responsa constitute an intimate glimpse of how rabbis org
anized moral life and the assumptions used to guide individual and group behavior, particularly regarding compliance with German regulations. Judenrat leaders, as well as ordinary citizens, consulted the rabbis, who provided moral coherence for a universe rapidly disintegrating under the force of German rule. Many of the surviving responsa deal with petitions for remarrying without proof of death of the former spouse; during and after the war, they provide detailed glimpses into the human and social devastation imposed on Jewish life. The following example is typical of responsa regarding remarriage.
David wished to marry a woman he had known for a few months; his wife and five children had disappeared on a transport to the East; her husband was shot in a mass grave in a forest near the ghetto. David lacked proof of death, but knows his wife’s destination was Auschwitz. Should she be considered dead? Evidence of death, of course, is nonexistent; but many people in the ghetto saw her pushed into the boxcar. David asks for the rabbis to rule for a presumption of death.
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The Kovno Judenrat brings before Rabbi Abraham Shapiro, Chief Rabbi of Kovno, a request to decide if the council should hand out yellow labor cards; cardholders will be exempt from any future selection. Those not holding cards face an almost certain death. The Judenrat office is besieged by hundreds of people demanding labor cards. The Judenrat asks the Chief Rabbi to decide whether labor cards should be distributed. ‘If the decree to destroy an entire Jewish community has been determined by the Enemy,’ Shapiro writes, ‘and through some measure or other it is possible to save part of the community, its leaders are obliged to summon up their spiritual strength and take upon themselves the responsibility of doing whatever needs to be done to save a part of the community.’1 The philosophy of ‘saving the remnant’ guided Shapiro’s deliberations, even though, in retrospect, it could be argued that these kinds of decisions fell into Primo Levi’s ‘gray zone.’
In Auschwitz, a young boy asks a rabbi to bless his decision to substitute himself for another boy in a group selected for the gas chambers. A group of several hundred children between the ages of nine and fourteen will be killed the following morning. He wants rabbinical sanctification for the act, but is prepared to go ahead even if the rabbi refuses judgment.
Every day rabbis faced the prospect of bending traditional sources to the needs of the moment and to write decisions consistent with the imperative of survival. In this respect, the responsa indicate how close the rabbis were to the moral and psychological hammers inexorably destroying the Jewish community. For example:
‘Rabbi, my only son is in that cellblock [in Auschwitz]. I have enough money to ransom him. But I know for certain that if he is released, the kapos will take another in his place to be killed. So Rabbi, I ask of you a she’elah le’halakhah u’lema’aseh (a question which demands an immediate response to an actual situation). Render a judgment in accordance with the Torah. May I save his life at the expense of another? Whatever your ruling, I will obey it.’2
Rabbi Meisels refuses to make a judgment, arguing that the situation is so unprecedented that, without proper source books, it would be impossible to make a ‘reasoned’ decision. But the man insists: ‘Rabbi, you must give me a definite answer while there is still time to save my son’s life.’ The rabbi again declares nothing in the Talmud sheds light on this situation; the father takes this to mean that the rabbi will not sanction a ransom attempt. ‘Rabbi, this means that you can find no heter [permission] for me to ransom my only son. So be it. I accept this judgment in love.’ But the rabbi argues his silence should not be construed as disapproval: ‘Beloved Jew, I did not say that you could not ransom your child. I cannot rule either yes or no. Do what you wish as though you had never asked me.’3 And the father’s final response:
‘Rabbi, I have done what the Torah has obligated me to do. I have asked a she’elah [question] of a rav … . In your own mind; you are not certain that the Halakhah permits it. For if you were certain that it is permitted, you would unquestionably have told me so. So for me your evasion is tantamount to a pesak din – a clear decision – that I am forbidden to do so by the Halakhah. So my only son will lose his life according to the Torah and the Halakhah. I accept God’s decree with love and with joy. I will do nothing to ransom him at the cost of another innocent life, for so the Torah has commanded.’4
God is never questioned in the Halakhah; His ‘judgment’ remains pure. ‘For the believer there are no questions; and for the unbeliever there are no answers.’5 Yet, suicide and death rates dramatically rose. In January 1942, 5,000 died on the streets in Warsaw or in tiny apartments crowded with fifteen or twenty families. But the faith of the rabbis in the ancient biblical injunction never wavered: ‘The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law’ (Deuteronomy 29: 28). In Lodz, distraught parents, losing children to starvation, illness or random selections, throw themselves out of three-story windows; men and women, disheveled, covered with lice, roamed the streets asking to be shot. In Warsaw, totally withdrawn, disturbed children, in the gutters or door wells, lay in their own waste; the elderly dropped dead on sidewalks. These conditions had no effect on rabbinical judgments. The rabbis who were still alive affirmed what God means as majesty and power. The following from the Hekhalot Rabbati, an ancient mystical text, describes this unshakeable faith: ‘Wonderful loftiness, strange power, loftiness of grandeur, power of majesty.’6 While the Hekhalot is a mystical text from a different rabbinical tradition than the Halakhah or traditional law, both insist on an unquestioning, uncritical attitude towards God.
In 1939, outside Lublin, a group of Hasidic Jews forcibly assembled by the Germans was ordered to sing a light, popular Hasidic melody. Someone, however, initiated the more solemn song, Lomir zich iberbeten, Avinu shebashomayim [Let us be reconciled, our Father in heaven]. An observer at the scene describes the reaction:
‘The song [initially ordered by the Germans], however, did not arouse much enthusiasm among the frightened [Jewish] masses. Immediately Glovoznik [the troop’s commander] ordered his hooligans to attack the Jews because they refused to comply fully with his wishes. When the angry outburst against the Jews continued, an anonymous voice broke through the turmoil with a powerful and piercing cry: “We will outlive them, O Father in Heaven.” Instantly the song took hold among the entire people, until it catapulted [them] into a stormy and feverish dance. The assembled were literally swept up by the entrancing melody full of devekut [strong spiritual adherence] which had now been infused with new content of faith and trust.’7
A rabbi exhorts the few thousand left in the Warsaw ghetto after the mass deportations of 1942 to guard ‘against dejection and depression, and to support ourselves in God,’ even when God demonstrates no interest in protecting His people. ‘True,’ he says, ‘this is very, very difficult, since the suffering is too much to bear.’ By now, almost every survivor in the ghetto had lost a family member; death wagons daily picked up piles of corpses; the few thousand left lived in fear of selection and transport; food supplies were almost nonexistent; fuel had disappeared; apartments were unheated and had no running water or functioning toilets; human feces lay in apartment hallways. The stench of rotting and diseased flesh permeated the ghetto. The rabbi continues: ‘However, at a time when many Jews are burned alive sanctifying God, and are murdered and butchered only because they are Jews, then the least we can do is to confront the test and with mesirat nefesh [dedication] control ourselves and support ourselves in God.’8
One rabbi in Warsaw in the spring of 1943, however, staked out a different theological position. Rabbi Menachem Zemba rejected the notion that death itself sanctifies God’s name: ‘I insist that there is absolutely no purpose nor any value of kiddush haShem inherent in the death of a Jew. Kiddush haShem in our present situation is embodied in the will of a Jew to live.’ To live in Warsaw in the spring of 1943 meant, according to Zemba, not just to survive
, but to fight. ‘This struggle for aspiration and longing for life is a mitzvah [religious imperative] [to be realized by means of] nekamah [vengeance], mesirat nefesh [extreme dedication] and the sanctification of the mind and will.’9 Zemba provided both a theological and political contrast to Rabbis Shapira, Oshry and Meisels.
Compare Zemba’s position with the proclamation of Rabbi Yehezkiah Fisch who, it is reported, prior to entering the gas chamber of Auschwitz, cried out with a joyous clapping of hands: ‘Tomorrow we shall meet with our Father,’ or Rabbi Shem Klingberg, in Plazow, who prayed before his death, ‘May it be thy Will that I have the privilege of atoning for all Jews.’10 Kiddush haShem had little to do with Rabbi Zemba’s vengeance, nekamah. Hasidic theology saw the Holocaust as ‘the descent for the sake of the ascent,’ the darkness of suffering that precedes redemption.11 In the Jewish messianic tradition, central to Hasidic belief, each generation creates its own martyred Messiah to prepare the way for the final redemption. Periods of suffering, therefore, in the history of the Jewish people, beginning with the binding of Isaac, that have long preceded the coming of the final Messiah, comprise integral parts of the Hasidic story; and it is probably true that many Hasidic Jews went to their deaths believing the Holocaust to be part of that messianic hope, Hevle Mashiah, another agonizing trial preparing the Jewish people for the coming of the final Messiah.12
Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust Page 19