Lazer Beams

Holocaust Day: Mass Graves of Yanov

Today is Holocaust Day in Israel. The following is a short clip of one of my recent trips to Yanov, Ukraine, where my father's family comes from. The Nazis slaughtered 4,000 Jews there in the Spring of 1942. They are buried in two mass graves, one of 2,500 and one of 1,500. May their holy martyred memory - and the memory of all the 6 million martyrs - be sanctified and never forgotten.

Reb Shlomo Carlebach: The Last Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto

Thanks to Neshama in California for sending us the following clip, which is capable of making a stone shed tears. Remember that our return to Hashem in the holy Land of Israel is the only guarantee that there'll never again be a Warsaw Ghetto. Let's hope that this coming Pesach will be the real freedom holiday for our people Israel, once and for all coming home to the Land of Israel and the rebuilt united Jerusalem, amen.

Never forget

Holocaust Day: The Pin Cushion

Today is Holocaust Rememberence Day:

 

In the early summer of 1939, a mere two months before the Nazis invaded Poland, Kaila Burda said to her husband Gamaliel, “I’m at wit’s end. Chasia wants to go to the summer camp with her girlfriends from school. Why not send her?”

 

“Kaila, these are troubled times. When will you understand that we can’t stay here any longer. Chasia is the only Jewish child in her class. I’d prefer that she stays at home.”

 

“But she has nothing to do but draw. She sits at home and draws all day long! She needs to be outdoors and play with other children.”

 

Gamaliel shrugged his shoulders, “It’s not safe, but have it your way…”

 

Chasia went to summer camp. When her first day was over, she was a bloody mess, escorted home by one of the sixth-grade teachers. “We can’t take responsibility for your daughter,” she said in Polish to the appalled Gamaliel and Kaila on their front doorstep. “She’s the only Jewish girl in our school, and the other little girls know it. They played a game of “seamstress” and they made your daughter the pin cushion…”

 

After Kristallnacht in Germany, anti-Semitism in neighboring Poland was fast on the rise too.

 

Although Gamaliel had an exit visa since 1926, Kaila refused to leave her native Grodno and her beloved family. Gamaliel swore that he wasn’t waiting another 24 hours – he was living Poland with his 12-year old daughter, with or without his wife.

 

Gamaliel, Kaila, and their daughter Chasia left Poland on the last ship out, a few short weeks before the Nazi invasion.

 

* * *

 

By 1941, the Jews of Grodno were stuffed into the Grodno Ghetto. Those who survived the forced labor, disease, and starvation were transferred to Auschwitz and Treblinka in 1942 and wiped out in the gas chambers by 1943.

 

* * *

 

To this day, my mother – may Hashem grant her long and healthy days – has not fully recovered the trauma of having been a live pin cushion at twelve years old. Surely, this must have been a cruel and nightmarish site for my grandparents of blessed memory to see.

 

An onlooker with no emuna or historical perspective might have said on the spot, “How can G-d allow such a cruelty to happen?!”

 

Now, let’s add the historical perspective. All my mother’s family that stayed behind in Grodno was killed, either in the Polish Army, in the ghetto, or in Auschwitz and Treblinka. My mother and her parents arrived in America. She lived on to raise a family.

 

The living pin cushion forced my grandparents into action. Because of that living pin cushion, there are now three generations of Brodys living a Torah lifestyle in the Holy Land of Israel.

 

Looking at the whole picture, Hashem did everything for the ultimate best.

 

This is the lesson of Holocaust Day. For sure, no one can describe the pain or even fathom what the survivors went through. Yet, when Moshiach comes, there’s no doubt whatsoever that we’ll all learn how the Holocaust was a necessary step in the full redemption of our people, speedily and in our days.

 

Whether or not we understand what and why Hashem is doing a certain action for doesn’t alter the fact that the given action is for our ultimate benefit with no exceptions. Just as you don’t leave the stadium in the middle of the game, we can’t know the outcome of anything that Hashem does in the world without seeing what’s happening in proper historical perspective.

 

Until we see the full cycle of Hashem’s moves on the global chessboard, then we can’t possibly understand Hashem’s strategy.

 

Guess what – it’s not our task to understand neither Hashem’s strategy nor His rationale.

 

So what do we do to weather a crisis, especially something seemingly disastrous?

 

We strengthen ourselves in emuna, knowing that Hashem is doing everything for the best, even when He makes us into a human pin cushion.

 

May the cherished memories of the Holocaust martyrs never be forgotten, amen.   

 

* * * * *

You'll find a many more eye-opening articles about the Holocaust on this week's edition of Breslev Israel web magazine. We highly recommend The Girl with the Apple, First Day in Auschwitz, The White Angel of Auschwitz, and The Good Shabbos Niggun. You'll find many more moving Holocaust-Day articles here.

 

May we all see the true and final redemption of our people speedily and in our days, amen.

 

Come on Home!

Holocaust Day this year falls on Monday Night and Tuesday, 20-21 April, 2009.

Many people are asking if there could be another holocaust, G-d forbid, and particularly in the "Land of the Free." For the last three weeks, people have been sending me a steady stream of emails asking for my opinion on Nava's post (Dreaming of Moshiach, one of the most popular Jewish blogs on the web) from April 7 entitled American Jews: Leave Now!, where she brings a number of sources that urge US Jews to leave write away.

Not long ago, Rabbi Shalom Arush said, “Those who don't come to Israel while they still can may be lucky to escape from the USA with a plastic bag and a pair of pajamas in the not so distant future.” Unlike some of the sources Nava brings, Rabbi Shalom says that they shouldn't feel like a gun is pointing at their head, but that all the Jews of the Diaspora - not just America - have an obligation to do their utmost to Come on Home to Israel as soon as they can.  

Rabbi Shalom Arush discusses the root cause of the Holocaust in One Infamous Night, our feature article in this week's Breslev Israel web magazine.

Were it not for a tragedy that happened to my own mother in Grodno, Poland (now Belarus) right before WWII broke out, your friend Lazer wouldn't be here. Read how even tragedies are all for the best in The Pin Cushion, this week's absolutely must-read.

Read about the Death Train and a dozen more gripping original Holocaust Day articles in this week's issue.

Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron says that if one really wants the truth, he or she will find it in Keep Searching.

Rivka Levy talks about what it feels like when all your neighbors are having babies and you're not in Maybe Baby.

Oded Mizrachi tells part 2 of Girl of Sinai and Shlomo Brunell tells us part 6 of his personal odyssey from Presbyterian Minister to Orthodox Jew in Strangers No More.

Alice Jonsson asks a tough question in Who are You to Judge? Sara Azulai writes about this year's Blessing in the Curse. Breslev Kids get more Perek Shira for kids.

This week's Torah portion is Tazria - Metzora. Here's wishing you a week of blessings and success.

The Mass Graves of Yanov, Ukraine

Today is Holocaust Rememberance Day

My father's family comes from the town of Yanov, which is half way between Breslev and Berditchev in the central Ukraine.

There are two mass graves in Yanov. The first, pictured directly below, is where 2500 Jews from the Carpathian area were loaded on cattle cars and shipped north. The Nazis decided to spare the fuel that the continued journey to the concentration camps would require, and pulled the Jews off the train at this crossroads, made them dig a tremendous pit where the memorial is behind the white wall in the background, and machine gunned them.

Mass Grave #1 - Yanov junction, 2500 Jews

The second mass grave (photo below), in Yanov township amidst the old Jewish cemetary, holds the 1000 Jews of Yanov that were killed in a house-to-house extermination by SS stormtroops. They were then thrown in a mass pit. Among these Jews are my father's aunts, uncles, and cousins. Today, I'm involved in caring for this site. If I don't, then the Ukranians will turn it into a potato field.

We'll never forget. Ever.