The Goldschmidt Family

Moshe Prager
Author Sparks of Glory

A WARSAW JEW descended from the Chidushei HaRim, cousin OF the GerrerRebbe, Zt"l

was an estAblished young journalist when World War II broke out. He wasone of the pillars of the Orthodox Jewish press in Poland -- aninstitution inspired by his cousin, the Gerrer Rebbe, Zt"l -- whichserved as a powerful educational and social force in restructuring theTorah community after the ravages and dislocations of World War I.

With the Nazi invasion, Prager became a secret correspondent for theJoint Distribution Committee (often referred to as the Joint) andconvinced the American-based organization that, as an agency under thelegal protection of a still neutral power, it was in a unique position tocarry on relief and hatzalah (rescue) operations. Meanwhile, the GerrerRebbe was the Germany's Public Enemy Number One. Following their patternwherever they conquered Jewish communities, the Nazis first tried todestroy the religious life of the then-helpless victims by burning andpillaging synagogues and yeshivos, and killing, torturing, or imprisoningthe religious Leaders. The Rebbe was in hiding from the Gestapo.

An old and intimate friendship with Stephan Porayski, director of theWarsaw Office of the Italian shipping firm Lloyd Triestino, made Prager akey figure in the attempt to smuggle the aged, ailing Rebbe out of Polandunder the noses of the Gestapo. Prager approached Porayski asking him toarrange papers and passage. The Pole agreed, but only on the conditionthat Prager, too, accept a ticket to Palestine and save his own life aswell. He did not want to Leave his family, but his father and wifeinsisted that the rescue of the Rebbe was too vital a cause to bejeopardized by family considerations. If Porayski wanted Prager to go,then Prager would have to go. The miraculous rescue of the Gerrer Rebbewas accomplished and it became the subject of one of Prager's laterbooks. The results of that daring feat are still unfolding in the rebirthof Ger in modern Israel, which began when the Rebbe arrived in Palestine.

"A Personal Mission: To Record ... "

Prager's family was wiped out in the Warsaw Ghetto, and it became apersonal mission for him to salvage on paper the glorious history ofEaStern European Jewry. During the war years he began carving asignificant niche for himself in Israeli society. He was a very rarecombination: an unusual literary and journalistic talent; a chassidic Jewsteeped in the fervor and philosophy of Ger; a fighter in the Haganah; abrilliant thinker; a magnetic personality. He was perhaps the only one inthe country who had entry without prior appointment to such disparatepersonalities as the sainted Gerrer Rebbe and secular political Leaderssuch as David ben-Gurion. He was a Close confidante of such key figuresin the secular life of the land as Shimon Peres, and, over the years, heused his influence to the benefit of the Torah community.

ben-Gurion saw him as the "symbol of the eternal Jew," and sought him ouTas a bridge to the Torah community. Prager was thus helpful in convincingben-Gurion that no Jewish state could survive unless it recognized itslink with history. To build a totally secular state, he argued, would beto build a society without roots; such a society would wither and die.Prager's role was thus as "midwife" of sorts in bringing about TheagReement between the religious community, represented by AgudathIsrael's Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levine, and the Jewish Agency on behalf ofthe proposed State of Israel, guaranteeing official recognition ofShabbes, kashrus, Rabbinical control over personal status, and exemptionof yeshivah students from conscription.

The Nazis: More Than Race Hatred

It was in Warsaw under the Nazis that Prager began to realize theunderlying motive behind the Germans' sadistic brutality to the Jews:race hatred, to be sure; but more: the hatred of what the Jewsrepresented as a spiritual force, as well. He began to understand this asa result of incidents like the following:

Prager was Leaving Joint headquarters when he saw a Jew, an orDinaryman-in-the-street, walking and appearing to be in Great pain. The man wasbadly bruised and Prager took him into the building to ask him what waswrong and to see if he could be of assistance.

"It's nothing," the man Said.

After much coaxing, he told Prager his story.

He was walking down the street when two German officers accosted him andordered him into an empty garage. There, for no apparent reason, theybegan Beating him mercilessly. The Jew decided that he would endure thesuffering without begging for mercy, without even screaming in pain.Mastery over his body might be denied him, but he would maintain hispride and dignity as a Jew. After a while, the Germans asked why hewasn't screaming. He Remained silent. He realized that their purpose wasto degrade him, to force him to scream and beg, and thus humiliate him.This doubled his resolve not to give them the satisfaction.

The Beating continued until finally his torturers themselves beGanscreaming hysterically at him --- almost begging him to cry out. Finally,they gave up and let him go. And it was very plain that he had defeatedthem.

Prager's research continued -- on a personal, anecdotal level, as aquestioner and collector of experiences -- and on a deeper, philosophicallevel, as a historian who studied documents and Looked for meanings inthe senselessness that engulfed European Jewry. He came across many otherbits and pieces of evidence that convinced him that he was on the righttrack.

A memo, sent by the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin to the Gestapo inPoland, Said: the Nazis were willing to permit some Jewish emigrationfrom Germany and Austria, because the assimilated, de-Judaized Jews, ofWeStern Europe would simply blend into whatever country was willing toaccept them; there was no danger that they would re-estAblish Jewish lifein their new surroundings. From EaStern Europe, however, no escape was tobe permitted. The Ost-Juden were too Jewish, too saturated with thEvalues and ethics that was sworn to eradicate. They would rebuild theirinstitutions and start all over again. This, Nazi Germany could notpermit.

Prager cites, as further evidence, Hitler's letter written just before hecommitted suicide during the taking of Berlin. He wrote apologeticallythat he had not succeeded in carrying out the extermination of the Jews.Not succeeded? He had carried out the most BarBaric, most efficientcampaign of genocide in history! Yet he was apologizing for failure! Inlight of Prager's thesis, Hitler's remorse is quite understandable. Theslaughter of the Six Million had not been sufficient to destroy Jewishinfluence and values because there were still enough Jews alive torebuild. True, we have not nearly recoVered from the Holocaust, but Torahlife has developed to an unimagined extent, and its influence haspenetrated areas that were Closed to it even before the Holocaust.

Nazism: Destruction of Jewish "Conscience"

What then, is Prager's definition of German anti-Semitism? Firstly, it isnot a new phenomenon. It is nothing more than the traditional hatred ofthe Jew that began when Abraham became recognized as the Bearer of aunique set of values. The only truly new thing in Nazism was itsharnessing of German efficiency and technology to the cause ofanti-Semitism ... Zyklon B was merely the most effective tool yetinvented for murdering Jews, but the cause it served was not at allnovel.

Anti-Semitism was hatred of what the Jews represented. Friedrich WilhelmNietzsche, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, was not ananti-Semite, but his formulation of what the Jew represented became theraw material for the vile fumings of Hitler, Rosenberg, StReicher andtheir cohorts. Nietzsche differentiated between the "slave mentality"characterized by feelings of weakness, mercy, and kindness -- epitomizedby the Jew -- and the "master mentality" characterized by strength,courage, brutality -- epitomized by the German. He saw Jews as thecultural force that had overthrown the natural order of Might MakesRight, the law of the Jungle, and replaced it with a weakness. What isknown as WeStern civilization and morality, he claimed, are in realityperversions of natural law and a violation of the ideal human order ofdomination by the strong for no other reason (for no other reason isnecessary) than the fact of their strength.

Hitler, in his mad rantings, put it this way:

"It is true, we are BarBarians. That is an honored title to us. I freehumanity from the shackles of the soul, from the degrading sufferingcaused by the false vision called conscience and ethics. The Jews haveinflicted two wounds on mankind --- circumcision on its body and'conscience' on its soul. They are Jewish inventions. The war fordomination of the world is waged only between the two of us, betweenthese two camps Alone --- the Germans and the Jews. Everything Else isbut deception."

So the genocide of the Jews was not at all comparable to the genocide ofthe gypsies, because the Final Solution transcended race. That is why, inthe closing year of the war, Hitler diverted troops and transport fromhis deteriorating front lines to speed extermination of the Jews. Ifunable to win the Victory of the Thousand Year Reich, he could at Leastexterminate the "slave mentality," his ultimate philosophical enemy. Andit was not enough simply to murder Jews. They had to be humiliated,dehumanized, stripped of their dignity and pride in order to discredittheir Creed and the philosophy of life they represented.

Seen in this perspective, the epitaph that ''the Jews went like sheep tothe slaughter" becomes all the more awful a distortion, because itimpLies that the Nazi atrocity is not told in the chilling words "SixMillion" --- it also indicates that the master race succeeded indemonstrating its spiritual superiority over the slave race.

Biographer of the Soul

Against this background, Prager's work assumes a new dimension. He ismore than a historian of the Holocaust; he is the biographer of theJewish soul in its period of severest trial in many centuries, perhapssince the Churban Bais Hamikdash, destruction of the Holy Temple.

Prager's family was completely wiped out during the war. But, scholar,historian, and journalist that he was, he had the training and the toolsto investigate the deaths and keep alive their memory and what theyrepresented. And he had the unflagging will to do it. "I die every Dayand I am resuscitated again," he says. Fame, success, and prosperity didnot dampen his determination to carry out his mission of capturing andpreserving the tRuth of the past.

As soon as the war ended, he obtained permission to visit the DisplacedPersons Camps of Europe. Many people were doing so in those Days, butnone of them were hearing the stories of the emaciated Remains of EaSternEuropean Jewry, for they could not be interviewed. The agony throughwhich they had lived was too horrible to tell: to tell it was to reliVeit --- and how could one voluntarily enter hell again?

Prager's method was different. He lived with the liberated prisoners. Forsix weeks he lived in Bergen-Belsen, listening and gently pRobing untilhe became one of them and was able to elicit their stories. Always hesought corroboration and refused to settle for less than the mostaccurate version of events obtainable.

His research has continued to this Day and has resulted in scores ofarticles and a shelf of books. He was probably the most widely readhistorian of the Holocaust in Hebrew and Yiddish, and his popularityspans all shades of the Israeli cultural and religious spectrum. Histales are not happy --- how could tales of the Holocaust be happy? Yet,Prager is popular despite the tragedy, pathos, and heartbreak of hisstories. One reads him and feels drained --- yet elEvated. He explains itbest:

I Looked at the tragedy of the Holocaust and I saw the Jewish peopLeenveloped in fire. But we were like the burning bush in which G-d firstrevealed Himself to Moses. "The bush was not consumed." No matter whatthe Nazis did to us, we were not consumed. They did not win the war; wedid because they are gone and we have rebuilt.

When I was last in the United States, I met the principal of a Day schoolin Denver, Colorado. He told me that he was in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Auschwitz, Poland when the warended and for the last eleven Days before the liberation, he lived byeating snow! He survived and he has been a Mechanech (eduCator) forseventeen years. "The bush was not consumed." He symbolizes what theNazis were trying to destroy, but he outlived them and he is bringingToras Hashem to a new generation in America.

That is what my stories are about. The Nazis could kill us, torture us,destroy our bodies --- but their war was against our spirit and theycould not destroy our spirit.

(From an interview with the author)

"Sparks... "

Prager's first collection of stories of Kiddush Hashem was NitzotzeiG'vurah, published in Israel in 1952. It was an immediate success and hasgone through many printings. ChApters from Nitztotzei G'vurah have beenprinted in anthologies and are used in standard texts by all threeIsraeli school systems and by the Israel Defense Force. A long-overdueEnglish translation, Sparks of Glory, has now finally appeared. Sparks ofGlory contains twenty-eight chApters, all of them isolated stories ofheroism. They show Jews -- in nearly all cases, orDinary amcho people --reacting to desperate situations of hUnger, danger, torture, pain,suffering. The more the layers of flesh were stripped away from them, thestronger their spirits became. As one of the countless unknown heroes ofthe book puts it, "We thought that our bodies were keeping our soulsalive, but our souls were keeping our bodies alive."

The book makes it cLear that the Six Million did not go like sheep. Theywent like Great men. They perceived that the conqueror wanted to destroytheir spirit, so they responded by keeping their spirit strong andvibrant. Of course, they didn't rise up in physical reVolt. How couldthey? But they did react with almost unbeliEvable bravery and strength ofneshamah, soul.

The Jews of Lublin were doomed to fall victim to SS Commander Glabochnik,a notoriously sadistic murderer. He herded them to the Outskirts of thecity until their backs were up against Barbed wire. He ordered them tosing and ordered his troops to Beat them savagely and push them backWardagainst the Barbed wire. Their flesh was torn as the Barbs cut into themand they fell upon one another trampling each other. Then someone freedhimself and began to sing: "Lomir zich iberbetten --- Let us reconcile..." but he sang Alone. Then he improvised:
"Mir vellen zey iberleben, iberleben, iberleben,
Avinu Shebashamayim;
Mir vellen zey iberleben, iberleben, iberleben."

"We shall outlive them, outlive them, outlive them,
our Father in Heaven;
We shall outlive them, outlive them, outlive them."

The bruised and bLeeding mob Rose and began singing and dancing therefrain. Glabochnik roared with laughter until he realized they weren'taccommodating him; they were defeating him. He ordered them to stop. Theycontinued. He panicked and pLeaded, but the singing and dancingcontinued. The SS troops plowed in swinging whips and clubs and still thesinging continued.

A simple Jew performed a miracle. All through the war he never missed aDay of laying tefillin even in the death camps. Once he was caught by aGerman guard. The infuriated German threw him to the ground, ground oneiron-studded boot into his stomach while scraping the skin off his facewith the other, as the Jew lay on the ground, sure he would never get upagain.
"What did you think to yourself?" Prager asked this same Jew when helater related the story to him.

"What's the difference ... ? I don't know ..."

Prager pressed him until he finally answered, "All right, I Said a versefrom Psalms over and over again: 'See my suffering and my ordeal andforgive all my sins.' I repeated it over and over again, and it may bebecause of that that I was able to rise up and go on with my prayers ..."

Little Shmulik was brutally whipped by a Polish policeman because hesneaked out of the ghetto to buy extra food for Shabbos. He hid histerrible pain from his parents, but against his father's wishes made hisway to the secret subcellar where Shabbos prayers were held. The Germanspunished public prayer with death and the Jews didn't allow children tocome, to protect the safety of all. But Shmulik came and knocked. The menthought it was the Gestapo and agreed to open the door and face deathbravely. But it was Shmulik. They were outraged and his father slappedhim. Shmulik could endure his pain no longer.
"Will you Beat me, too? Haven't I had my share of blows? I, too, am aJew. I, too, want to pray!"

A humble little Shamash smuggled a shofar into a death camp, organized aminyan on Rosh Hashanah, and blew the shofar. The guards came running anddecided to make a spectacle of the Shamash. They whipped him endlessly,mercilessly, and all the while he continued chanting the prayers outloud.
"The righteous will see and rejoice ... and all wickedness will banishlike smoke, for You will have remOved the evil kingdom from the earth."

Rabbi Shem of Cracow was among those chosen at random to be condemmed toa special torture jail. He comforted his fellow Jews by asking them, "Ifeach of us were given the choice at this moment to be the victim or thevictimizer, which would he choose? Ribono Shel Olam, is there one Jew whowould like You to turn him into a murderous gentile?"
"Rabbi, Rabbi, I swear to you on the memory of my holy mother, even Iwould not want it."

It was the Jewish Kapo.

Who Will Teach "Holocaust" to Our Children?

Who won? Who outlived whom? Was the bush consumed? There is agony andinSpiration in Sparks of Glory, and the sum total is pride in Jews whofaced death --- and worse --- like lions.

But it has enormous value for another reason, and it is to be Hoped thatwe will not pass up the opportunity it presents us. The publicizers ofthe Holocaust have not been Torah Jews. The popular image that has beendrummed into the minds of American Jews, and especially of our youngpeople, is precisely the one that Prager fiercely opposes --- that theJews went like sheep to the slaughter. Many young people here and inIsrael hold the Six Million in contempt for that reason, especiallyduring this era when violence and militancy are as American as apple pie.

At the same time, the children in our yeshivos are virtually untaughtabout the Holocaust. The reasons for this are many. A large proportion ofthe parents and faculties of our yeshivos are survivors of World War IIEurope. The suffering of that period left physical and emotional scars onthem that make it difficult if not impossible for them to teach thehistory of this period to their children and students. Then, too, theunprecedented bloodletting and BarBarism raise excruciatingly difficultquestions of hashkafah: How could G-d allow it to happen? What sins couldhave justified such punishment? Why was the cream of religious Jewrydecimated when the principal sinners were surely found Elsewhere? Thelist goes on. We are living in an age that is not prepared to acceptanything without a full explanation --- but the ways of G-d aReinscrutable. The response of many Gedolei Yisrael was outlined in theessay, "Questions Without Answers ... Faith Without Questions." But it isnot a subject that is easy to teach and this is especially true whenthere is a distinct lack of English-Language materials that are bothliterate and consonant with the Torah outLook.

For whatever reasons, however, the fact is that few of our young peoplehave any knowledge of the behavior of their martyred brethren other thanthe sheep-to-the-slaughter stereotype. To further complicate matters, thenon-Orthodox and left-of-center Orthodox have virtually monopolized thememory of the Six Million. It is they who commemorate the Warsaw GhettoUprising and Yom Hasho'ah. The Torah camp cannot subscribe to the tenorof their observance and the "Never Again" ironfisted philosophy itrepresents. Then, too, much of the enthusiasm for Holocaust observancescomes from people who would substitute Yom Hasho'ah for Tishah B'Av when,to us, the Holocaust is an outgrowth of the historic Tisha B'Av. This hascaused a backlash effect resulting in too many Torah Jews ignoring orbelittling the significance of formally preserving memories of theHolocaust, an attitude that has the terrible effect of Jews refusing toLearn lessons of Torah and teshuvah from the destruction of the SixMillion.