THE WRITING ON THE WALL IN AUSCHWITZ

Tishrei 5759/1998: Simchas Beis HaShoeiva on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights. It was 3:00 in the morning, yet the dancing Chassidim looked as though they could go on endlessly.

Among the thousands of people were two young bachurim, Daniel and Ronnie, both of whom learned in Chabad mosdos in Italy. They were fervent Chassidim and mekusharim, heart and soul, to the Rebbe. Ronnie is now Rabbi Ronnie Canarutto, shliach in Viale Libia in Italy, and Daniel, a close friend, was and still is a Lubavitcher Chassid, though externally, you would not know this. He would look like a mekurav to you, until you heard his special story.

The band began to play a Chabad niggun that starts off slowly and then picks up speed, “S’iz duch altz hevel havalim, ein od milvado” (it’s all vanity of vanities; there is naught but Him). Ronnie grasped Daniel’s shoulders, and then lifted his hands energetically with the words “ein od milvado.” He began to dance.

But Daniel didn’t get caught up in the dancing. His reaction to the niggun was emotional instead.

“Hey Daniel, what’s up with you?” asked Ronnie, turning to his friend. “Simchas Beis HaShoeiva is a time for simcha, not for melancholy …” He tried drawing Daniel into the dancing and simcha, but Daniel’s tears became heartrending.

“You don’t understand …” he mumbled through his sobs. “Let’s leave the circle for a quiet corner and I’ll explain.” Ronnie, full of curiosity, readily followed him.

As they neared one of the public Sukkas, Daniel said, “Please repeat the words they were singing before and explain them to me.”

Ronnie repeated and translated them and explained: “Everything that happens in this world is nonsense, transient, false. There is nothing but G-d, everything is G-dliness.”

Daniel could not stop crying. “Do you know these words?” wondered Ronnie. “Why are you crying? Can you explain what’s going on?”

SHLICHUS TO 
THE PRIME MINISTER

Daniel was a gifted child. One year, the Jewish Federation of Europe organized a trip to Eretz Yisroel for gifted children from all over Europe. Daniel was chosen to represent Italy.

The State of Israel accorded great honor to this young delegation and they were invited to visit the prime minister, ministers, Knesset members, and the president. Shortly before that, Daniel visited shluchim and Chabad rabbanim who had been informed by Rabbi Gershon Mendel Garelik and his son Moshe about this delegation’s visit to Eretz Yisroel. When Daniel met with the shliach R’ Yosef Shmuel Gerlitzky of Tel Aviv, he was given written information about the Torah’s view on giving away parts of the holy land.

Astonishingly, the young boy resolved to share this information when he visited with Yitzchok Rabin and his Oslo partner in crime, Shimon Peres. It was an extraordinary shlichus in which he used the prestigious event to promote the Torah’s view and the Rebbe’s fight for shleimus ha’aretz.

The reactions of the two men were different. Peres put the paper aside, publicly expressing his dissatisfaction with it, while Rabin politely thanked Daniel and put the page in his pocket.

Daniel merited many kiruvim from the Rebbe, but that would require a separate article and a personal interview with him. In the meantime, let us return to the streets of Crown Heights and to the two friends, Roni and Daniel.

WRITING ON THE WALL

“It was in the midst of a harsh winter,” Daniel said to Ronnie, “when my friends, teachers and I went on the March of the Living to Auschwitz in Poland. The temperature had dropped to five below zero; in our hearts, it was much colder. Images passed before our eyes, from the not-so-distant past, of Jews like us, young people like us, who were butchered, shot, tortured and degraded, just because they were Jews.

“My friends continued to walk around with the organized tour, while I decided that looking at the exhibits and crematoria, as horrifying as they were, were not enough for me. I wanted to try and feel what it must have been like for a Jewish boy my age to be in this place. I quietly left the group and entered one of the barracks where the Jewish prisoners had been housed. I took off my coat and lay down on one of the bunks. I closed my eyes and began to imagine.

“I felt the freezing cold penetrate my bones and the hardness of the bunk under my back, the terrifying quiet which, at any moment, could be broken by the bloodcurdling shriek of a Nazi officer, with the brief thud of a bullet hitting a Jew, or the door being broken down by an SS officer with orders to get out and head for the gas chambers. I imagined that I smelled the awful stench rising from the crematoria.

“My visualizations caused me to cry like an older person, soundlessly leaving my cheeks wet. When I opened my eyes I noticed some writing etched into the wall. I managed to read it but found it odd. I had never read these words before. I read it again and again and engraved the words into my heart, ‘S’iz duch altz hevel havalim, ein od milvado.’”

Ronnie, who was listening closely to every word, apologized, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you ….”

But Daniel interrupted him and said, “Wait, listen to what happened next.

“I turned to get off the bunk when I suddenly saw an older man. I was frightened. I didn’t know where he had appeared from. ‘Boy, are you normal? What are you doing here without a coat? Do you want to get sick?’ he yelled at me.

“I said, ‘I wanted to feel what the unfortunate Jews who were here felt.’ The man sighed and whispered, ‘My dear boy, you will never, ever be able to feel what a Jew in Auschwitz felt. I, who was here and was saved by miracles, can tell you that nothing can help you feel, even minimally, what the hell on earth that was Auschwitz was like.’

“My curiosity aroused, I asked, ‘You were here in Auschwitz?’ He replied, ‘Here, in this very room. Every corner, every bunk, every step, brings me back to those moments of terror.’ I asked him, ‘Do you know who slept here, in this bunk?’

“He replied, ‘Of course. A Lubavitcher Chassid slept there. I will never forget how, in the hardest times, in the midst of hard labor or terrible hunger, he always had a smile on his refined though pained face. Even when we were all broken, he would sing an old Chabad melody. He was the very spirit of life in Auschwitz. Not only was he never broken in spirit, but he made sure we were all uplifted, above our surroundings, so that we could look upon the Nazis as a passing shadow.

“‘They can only break our bodies, enslave and mock us, but they can never touch our spirit, our neshama, our faith. ‘S’iz duch altz hevel havalim, ein od milvado’ he would say and sing. This niggun didn’t leave his lips. I’ll never forget that cursed day when the Nazis took that Chassid to the crematoria. He walked upright and with his niggun on his lips, ‘S’iz duch altz hevel havalim, ein od milvado.’”

Daniel finished his story in a neighborhood light years away from the barracks of Auschwitz. “In those moments I experienced an intense spiritual upheaval. It struck me in an instant that Chabad is my path. I knew that I am a Chassid of the Rebbe. I had not a shadow of a doubt that only someone who learns Chassidus and is mekushar to the Rebbe can rise above the most difficult of circumstances and remain a believer, trusting, and happy.”

***

The band had, by then, moved on to other niggunim. On the edge of one of the circles, two young bachurim danced with a hand on each other’s shoulder. “S’iz duch altz hevel havalim, ein od milvado,” they sang and they danced and cried. Nobody watching would understand why.