A few nights ago I attended a Seder which commemorated freedom No, not Pesach, that was 2 weeks ago. This was the annual commemoration and celebration of my father-in-law, Nathan Werdiger's rescue and liberation from Buchenwald April 11 1945. He calls it his rebirth. He had survived slave labour in Auschwitz Birkenau, then a death march to Buchenwald and was probably hours from death when the Americans came. He had in fact been thrown onto a pile of corpses and left for dead. His brother Nechemia, the only one of his family who had survived, had refused to leave the camp to go into the forest as the Nazi guards had ordered him to so that they could gun him down as they did with the other running Jews. Miraculously they let him stay. Under cover of darkness he went back to the pile of corpses and pulled his brother out; he was still alive.
My father-in-law doesn't really remember these details because he was unconscious. He remembers that he had been unable to walk for some time before, having to creep on all fours 'like a dog'. He remembers that he was a Musselman, a walking skeleton, neither fully alive or dead. He remembers lying in the shelf bunk, helpless in his own filth because of the typhus. He remembers being held upright for the roll calls, because anyone who collapsed would be shot. In fact, when he did collapse, he wasn't shot because the Nazi didn't want to waste a bullet on someone who was so clearly moribund, and that was when he was thrown onto the pile. That part Nechemia told him.
The Americans resuscitated him, refed him very slowly, as by then they had learned a little about the risks of food to such starved individuals, many of whom died from rapid refeeding; and his friend Shabsi Kornwasser z'l taught him to walk again. (Shabsi eventually made his way to Melbourne and was also a friend of my father z'l.)
The brothers were sent to Davos in Switzerland for treatment and rehabilitation. The Swiss interned the survivors in barracks surrounded by barbed wire-topped walls - very sensitive of them- because they were terrified of the diseases that these desperately sick people carried. They made them all sign documents that would ensure that they would leave Switzerland once they were well enough and not try to claim refuge and citizenship.
My father in law tells of the time that he arrived in Davos. Escorted by military personnel, a group of these boys- they all had to be under 18 in order to merit this treatment, so some became younger, (just as they had to be older in order to escape the selection for the gas chambers on entering Auschwitz, so some had immediately become older)- were in their prison camp garb, and some previously content Swiss citizens saw them. Some turned away. Some wept. Some offered Nathan money. He took the coins and threw them back at their feet. He told them that giving him money wouldn't take their guilt away from them. It was the first time since his rescue that he felt real anger.
Anyway, after 3-4 years in Davos sanatorium the brothers had regained their health. Photos at the end of the rehab show Nathan as a stocky young man, smiling at the camera, squinting into the sun carrying a pair of skis on his shoulder. But where was he to go? Certainly not back to Sosnowiecz where his family's apartment was now occupied by Poles who would not be happy to see the Jews return. Nechemia went to the US but US immigration didn't want Nathan because of his TB and poor health. But a cousin in Australia sponsored him out and the rest is history.
He married several years after. The short guy with the positive attitude won the beautiful daughter of the Rabbi and restarted his life. He managed to keep his optimistic outlook and his love of Yiddishkeit and Torah and raised a family which now has more than 100 members. He has been successful in business and life is good. He thinks he is 90, but he might be 88, and nothing is more important than his family whom he loves with all his being.
So at the Liberation dinner there is always bread to eat, because that was what they all dreamed of when they were starving, chicken soup, klops (meatloaf which my mother in law makes a superb version of) and other delicacies. My father in law gives testimony. Children and grandchildren speak.
My daughter Esther, who lives in New York, wrote a letter which I will excerpt:
'Central to my own relationship with my grandparents has always been the instinct to not only relate to them as matriarch and patriarch of our giant family unit, but as actual and real people - people with urges, flaws, regrets, idiosyncrasies. I always like to ask myself that if my father wasn't my father, or if my sister wasn't my sister, or whatever, and I met them at a party, would I talk to them? Would we become friends? Would we make each other laugh? Respect each other? When I'm with Bobba and Zaida, I'm often compelled to ask questions - and I really feel like nothing is too banal - because everything tells you SOMETHING. I ask questions ranging from, "Hey Zaida, when did you first eat a hot dog?" to "Hey Zaida, how did you believe in G-d after the Holocaust?" - and not out of any kind of irreverence. As members of the Jewish people, and members of each of our family units, we are collectors and stewards. We are gatekeepers and bodyguards, and we safeguard memory, ritual and experience. We collect things and pass them on. We document everything and we live to bear witness for what happened to our parents' parents, but also to what happened to the very first Jews. It's in our DNA - we don't exist in a vacuum, but as a small part of something much bigger and older, and each of us is entitled to the knowledge of all these events - as stressful as that may be for me to contemplate. It's too easy for all of this to translate to fear, guilt, pressure and resentment. But it's also so easy to see the beauty, the strength, and the power that comes from it all too. '
So it's a Seder. We talk, we listen, we discuss and we eat (of course!). We cry a little. We laugh. We are Jews and we are proud.
'In every generation', we read in the Haggadah, 'there rise against us those who would destroy us; but the Holy One, blessed be he, saves us.'
In every generation.
Never forget.
Never Again.
Am Yisrael Chai.
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