The Eighty First Blow

I first heard about the story that I am about to unfold to you here, dear readers, when I was a young child in Yisrael. The year was 1961.

In April of that year, Adolph Eichmann, the notorious Nazi criminal who was one of the initiators and implementors of the “Final Solution” for our Jewish People, stood trial in Yisrael, the National Home of the Jewish People after he had been kidnapped and brought to Yisrael.

The trial was broadcasted live over the radio. As a young child, I would never forget those long nights of pain, heartache and endless tears that poured like rivers from my parents’ eyes as the atrocious stories were being told, stories that no sane mind can digest. Those were the nights Yisrael stood still as witness after witness took the stand to point at this evil man and repeat two words that have become part of our Jewish DNA, “J’accuse!”

This is also where the story you are about to read was first told. This is where, my parents, two Shoah survivors, and I heard it for the first time.

It starts in the Przemysl ghetto. One of its inmates, a thin young man, age 16-17, along with a group of others were appointed as the “Transport Commando” where they were employed as carriers. Their duties consisted of emptying Jewish homes and transferring the content to storage.

One day, in the summer of 1943, close to the liquidation of the ghetto, the Nazis executed the train station manager. His crime, he was a Jew (though he had converted to Christianity earlier in his life). His wife who was not Jewish was shot as well.

Along with his team, this young man was assigned to empty is home. The place, as it turned out, housed many books,  a large portion, of which studied the subject of trains. The occupants of the ghetto had already heard about the trains and their destinations.

While removing the content of the train station manager’s residence, our young man decided to take some of the books and upon their arrival back in the ghetto hide them. Being aware that such a move was akin to signing one’s death warrant, did not deter the young man from pursuing his plan. He was adamant that those books should never fall into German hands.

A few days later, he was called into the yard. There, he saw the Jewish camp commander standing next to Yosef Schwammberger, the SS commander in charge of the camp. The latter was holding a leather strap which was tied to a dog’s collar. The strap was thick. On one side, it had a buckle.

The young boy had already witnessed the way the Nazi commander had employed the dog and on more than one occasion before. “Man, go get the dog,” was one of his favourite methods of punishment.

It was clear that something horrible was about to happen. One does not get to see commander Schwammberger for any minor issue.

“Where did you hide the books ?” roared the SS man after removing the strap from the collar.

Initially, the young man was unaware of his “crime.” When he realized what it was, he explained that when he got back to the ghetto, it was “lunch time” and by the time it was over, the books had disappeared so he had assumed that people had already taken them to read.

Wrong answer!

Yosef Schwammberger, raised the strap and hit the boy over his neck. He then ordered someone to bring in “the bench.” It was a special bench. On it, they would   lay the “culprits” or the victims and deal them twenty-five (25!) blows with no less than the buckle. After fifty (50!) blows, Yosef would produce his gun and shoot the victim. It was common knowledge.

The uncertainty of his fate was just as devastating as punishment by death.

When the strokes commenced, our young man started counting them. Surely, he felt, he could count to 25. After the 13^th and 14^th blows, he fainted. When he came to himself, he was hit again. He fainted several times. The other residents of the ghetto were asked to come out and watch it.

Suddenly, he felt nothing.

There were eighty (80!) blows, so the witnesses counted.

This young man was a miracle, the embodiment of one! Let me tell you why.

According to the Talmud, punishment by lashes, which was common in ancient times, should not surpass 39 for fear that the 40^th strike might be detrimental to them. The guilty person may be weak, can get sick or die as a result of them. The number of the lashes the accused was dealt was always measured against his health status for fear that such a practice might endanger him. But there were never more than thirty-nine. Thirty-Nine, NOT Eighty! To survive 80, it must be, it can only be a miracle

When he finally came to himself, our young man heard Schwammberger yelling : ”In three minutes, I want the books back in the library.”

Where he got the energy and the strength to get up and run to the piles of books, is an enigma to this young man who is now B’H 95 years old. He stood there with his back bleeding, waiting for Schwammberger’s orders. The latter pulled a Psalms book and asked him whether it was one of them. After, he confirmed it, the young man was ordered to go but not before he was dealt one more blow on his neck. For a few days afterwards, our young heroic man spent several days in the corridor.

This young man survived that horrific experience but lost his whole family. He survived Auschwitz. He clung to life, been to hell and came out of it ready to avenge the demons with staunch determination, a determination understood by very few.

During the Death March, when the Nazis were hastily moving the inmates westward, in the freezing winter, he was able to escape with a couple of friends. They were hiding until the arrival of the Russians at which time, our hero joined Red Army, learned to drive a tank and fought against the Nazi army, on the Czech front.

After the war he made it to Eretz Yisrael on a refugee boat. The boat was captured by the British sent to a detention camp in Cyprus and eventually married, set up a family, joined the police force, became a police officer and was appointed to be one of Eichmann’s, the now miserable, dismal creature that the former Nazi had become, interrogators.

Amazingly enough, our hero told his story only once. It was the first and the last time he had shared it, until Eichmann’s trial.

One of the witnesses in the Eichmann trial was Dr. Bushminsky, one of the ghetto residents who had seen what had happened in that yard, in the Przemysl ghetto, on that dreary day in the summer of 1943. When they first met and our young man introduced himself. The doctor, who evidently did not recognize him, said “I knew someone by that name in our ghetto. He was dealt 80 blows by Schwammberger. “Last I heard, he added, “he was dead.”

"He is not dead, he is standing right in front of you,” answered our friend.

Dr. Bushminsky must have shared that with Gideon Hausner, the Chief Prosecutor at the Eichmann trial. When Dr. Bushminsky took the witness stand he also shared the story about the young man who was beaten 80 times. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Hausner turned to Dr. Bushminsky and asked: “Can you point that young man to us?” “Yes, your honour,” answered Dr. Bushminsky, “he is sitting right next to you and is wearing a police officer’s uniform.”

Later, when asked by  Gideon Hausenr, the chief prosecutor in the Eichmann trial why he never shared his story more than once, the proud man unveiled a very sad reality that many of the other survivors faced upon sharing their story.

Disbelief.

As it turns out, our friend, did try to share history once with a couple who he had met. When  he finished his recount, he saw the man turn to his wife and say to her in Hebrew: “Shoah survivors had been through so much, sometimes they tend to mix truth with imagination.”

“That’s it,” he resolved right there and then and later disclosed to Hausner and others during one meeting, “I am not telling anymore fantasies.” The silence that cloaked the room was deafening.

“And that, for me,“ he added to their blank faces, “was……”
“Your Eighty First Blow,” uttered one of those present.

This hero is B”H still with us today. His name is Michael Goldman Gilad. He is the father of our dear friend here, Tal Gilad.

March of the Living and why I support it (Part Two)

Last week, I wrote an article in support of continuing the “March of the Living,” where young Yisraelis visit Poland and the death camps, an experience which many of those who partake in it describe as a deeply meaningful one. It is one that is mingled with sadness, agony on the one hand and joy and victory on the other.

Soon after I published my article, a dear friend who opposes this endeavor, sent me an article written several years ago by a Holocaust survivor, Ruth Bondy. It is entitled, “After we, the Holocaust Survivors, are gone.”

Very few can argue with Holocaust survivors about their trials which, naturally, helped shape their views. No one ever could and probably never would be able to grasp the abominable ordeals that they have been through. No one could speak in their name. We can only listen to their stories and admire them for their inner strength, endurance and the sacrifices they had to make.

We can, however, disagree with some of their views. And on this subject, I beg to differ with Ms. Bondy.

Reading her words, I sense a somber timbre, a trace of disappointment and doubt in the ability of many to carry on the survivors’ torch and share with the world their torments and tribulations. “Many will be relieved,” she writes, as she goes on to name some of those organizations, politicians and government agencies that might be relieved when the Holocaust survivors are no more.

In that, I fully agree with her. The miracle of their survival may be a burden to some.

However, I was somewhat surprised to read her suggestion, almost a directive, an order to cease with the practice of “March of The Living.”

“And put an end to the outrageous “marches of the livings,” to the school trips to places where Jews died, instead of to places where they lived—Toledo, Segovia, Rembrandt and Spinoza’s Holland, Odessa, and perhaps one day to Baghdad,” she writes.

She calls Poland, a place “where Jews died.” Instead, she suggests, visiting places like Holland, Spain where Jews “lived.”

With all due respect, will someone please point out to me a place where Jews ONLY lived and never died in, sometimes, strange deaths? Can anyone deny that in many of the places that she names, Jews both lived and died? Have Jews only “lived” in Spinoza’s Holland? How about Toledo? Have Jews not suffered there or died there sometimes under horrible conditions?

Poland is not only one big Jewish graveyard as history proves. It was, and few know it, also a place where Jews DID live and a very rewarding life, for many years. Poland was not only a haven for Jews for many years, it produced some of the greatest Jewish minds, Jewish thinkers, great Jewish Zionists who added immensely to a flourishing Jewish culture and later to the Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. I invite you to visit the Jewish museum in Warsaw. I was just there. What an eye-opening experience it was to learn that Poland, where vast parts of it are soaked with Jewish blood, was not only a big burial place for our People, it also provided a fertile cradle to our creativity and our Jewish ingenuity.

That is a fact!  And it is facts that we should teach our young ones. The many memorials and, the camps, the maps of the Ghetto, the crematoria, the gas chambers, they are ALL facts just as are the big synagogues, the gravestone are all testimonials to a formerly very thriving Jewish world, unfortunately a vanished world.

It is this vanished Jewish world that we need to educate our young ones about. It is the world that serves as a link, an important link in the chain of our Jewish existence.

When I educate my students about the Shoah, I stress that facet of our Jewish Polish heritage, a facet that I am afraid the cessation of the “March o the Living” might help erase. When my students go to Poland, they learn about the great Yeshivas and the amazing scholarship that they produced. The devastation that they face there serves as a constant reminder of a once great Jewish world, one that may evaporate into thin air should we fail to remind ourselves should we fail to see its remnants. To do that, in my view, would send a very strong message to the victims, a message they would have hoped never to receive. After all, isn’t it the very reason we continue to visit the graves of the Maccabees and the final stronghold of the heroes of Metzada? Is not our arrival at their final resting place aimed at telling them that we will never forget the sacrifices they made? Or is the memory of some heroic Jews more equal than that of other Jews?

It is this experience, I believe, that will help infuse and reignite the defiant Jewish Spirit and remind us that “Never Again,” is eternal, just as eternal as our People.

Happy Yom Ha’atzmaoot to our dear beloved Yisrael. I salute ALL those members of our Jewish People who through their death, commanded us Life!

The Guilt of Some

I just got back from a seminar on Yiddish literature in Lithuania and Poland.

Needless to say, it was a very difficult trip. The monuments, the memorial sites, the death camps, every place was soaked with painful memories from our Jewish people’s recent sanguine history.

The visit to Poland, naturally, was overshadowed by the recent Polish law which calls for criminalizing some Holocaust speech accusing the Polish state or people of involvement or responsibility for the Nazi occupation during World War II. Punishment for breaking it can range from a fine or up to three years in prison. It went into effect on March 1, 2018.

Those who know me, know that as a daughter of two Shoah survivors, the subject is close to my heart. Some simply did not understand why I even bothered to visit Poland after this law had been enacted. For them such a law is a slap in the face of the victims and chose to ban Poland.

This was not my first visit to Poland. It may not be the last either. Let me make one point clear. I do not go there for cheap shopping or a vacation. I go there to tell the victims that they are not, nor will they ever be forgotten.

The last visit, however, brought about some insights which shed a light on a new reality. That reality, I believe, is not a pleasing one to the eyes, minds and collective subconsciousness of the Polish people.

Based on testimonies of friends and relatives who had visited Poland in the past, mainly before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Poland did not have nearly as many monuments commemorating the Shoah and its Jewish victims as it does now. Most tributes were dedicated to the Polish victims of the Nazi and Soviet occupation. And there is no denial that they were many.

Nowadays, more than ever, though, there are additional and new markers. They were erected to honour the Jewish ones. These are yet another permanent reminder of the extent of the Jewish graveyard that Poland was turned into by the Nazis and their Polish collaborators.

A note of caution is called for. In times of anger and grief, our human nature tends to generalize. One cannot and should never make sweeping statements. There were some Poles who helped Jews. My father was saved by one. I, for one, will never forget that.

Let us also not forget that many Poles were themselves victims of the Nazis. However, anyone who denies the collaboration between Poles and the Nazis verges on Shoah denial. That includes some of my Jewish friends who have suddenly become bleeding hearts for Poles.

Many Poles did assist the Nazi killing machine as it ploughed through their country in an effort to make Europe “Judenrein.” My parents lived through that. They, other members of my family and their close friends were my most reliable and trusted witnesses for what happened during those times.

No one, be it an individual or a nation, likes to be constantly reminded of or hammered about their past transgressions.

That is precisely what the many monuments with Hebrew and Yiddish epitaphs inscribed on them, which have sprung since the end of the Cold War and which are strewn all over Poland, do. They put a permanent mirror to the face of a nation that was turned into a killing field pushing many of its members to becoming willing and in some cases unwilling collaborators.

And that, in my view, that constant reminder of past transgressions prompted the Polish Law which I mentioned above. It is, I believe, part of the Polish nation’s way to help its members overcome a hard, and unfortunately for them, a dark and uncomfortable chapter in their nation’s history. It is their defense mechanism, one means to cleanse and wash off their guilt especially when it is sprinkled with small doses of projection as reflected in the words of its Prime Minister who claimed that the Shoah had not only Polish, German or Ukrainian perpetrators, but Jewish ones as well.

It may help the Poles. As far as I am concerned, though, “Never Again” is as vibrant in me as ever before. Am Yisrael Chai!

May we all have a meaningful Pesach.

Survival was my Hope; Celebrating Life is my Victory

That title encapsulates the essence of the story I am about to unfold to you, a moving story of survival, hope and its eventual rewards of success.

Avraham Moshe Minkowski, also known to his friends as Manny, was born in 1926 in the town of Starachowica, in the southern part of Poland.

His religious Jewish family of ten enjoyed the quite life of their shtetel.  Manny belonged to the local chapter of Beitar and lived through a relatively normal childhood until that dreadful day in November 1939 where his world turned upside down as the Nazis marched into their little town.

On that day, at the young age of thirteen, soon before his Bar-Mitzvah, Manny and his father were separated from the rest of their family. That is when his  painful pilgrimage through the inferno of drifting from one Nazi labour camp to another, towards the final destination at Auschwitz, where he was reduced to number A19762 (etched in his brain in German until this very day!), started.

That journey is laced with tales of struggle, pain, humiliation, repeated beating, starvation, theft, death and other horrors which are too harsh and too many for this paper to contain. Manny’s strong spirit, however, overcame them all. He belongs to a very special and exclusive group of Jews who have inspired many of us, Shoah survivors. He is one of the invincible. No power would or could ever extinguish their tiny spark of Hope, a spark that ignited their desire to go on living and pass their legacy to future generations.

Manny’s journey of survival, however, did not end when the Russians liberated Auschwitz. Fortunately, neither had hope left his heart.

Soon thereafter, he realized that his road to freedom was still speckled with many more harsh experiences woven with pain and betrayal, forever testing his resolute Jewish Spirit which eventually prevailed. His wanderings took him to Germany, then back to his home town and after what seemed like an eternity, Manny found his way to a refugee camp in the most southern spot of the Italian boot.

While in Italy, where he spent a year and a half, first in its southern part and later in Arona in the north, Manny joined the Italian branch of the Irgun which had over a thousand members of Beitar who had arrived with the flood of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. It was there that he acquired the skills of mechanics and electricity which would eventually earn him a very important role in the history of the early days of the nascent state, Medinat Yisrael, our Jewish Homeland.

 These skills were first handy when Manny became part of the team that prepared the explosives which were used to bomb the British Embassy in Rome on October 30^th, 1946. The explosion which took place in the early hours of the morning, destroyed the central part of the building. Though the planners made every effort to avoid casualties, two Italian civilians were injured.

Then there was the Altalena Affair. Manny was selected to be one of its ten crew members.

The Altalena was an American made war ship, more precisely a landing craft. It was chartered for a twofold purpose, to bring European refugees to Eretz Yisrael and badly needed weapons for both Etzel (Irgun) and Haganah. In addition to the close to 1000 people on board, the ship also carried rifles, rounds of ammunition, Bren guns, armored vehicles and other war equipment.

                                                             Manny on board the Altalena 

                                  Training on board of the Altalena as it was making its way towards Yisrael

 A few precautionary measures were taken in order to assure that hostile powers would not be able to detect the ship. The first, a radio silence was declared and it had been agreed that the Haganah (a Jewish paramilitary organization during the British Mandate era which later became the core of the IDF) would send them a coded message where to land and unload the badly needed weapons.

Another measure was to blur the connection between the ship and the identity of its occupants. Some of the Hebrew names were changed into less sounding “Jewish”. That is when Avraham Moshe became Manny.

Unbeknown to the Altalena crew, a UN brokered truce was accepted by both sides. The first cease fire of Israel’s War of Independence went into effect while it was making its way to Yisrael.

On June 20^th, 1948. The Altalena arrived at the shores of Yisrael. No signal was given as to the place of landing, as had been agreed prior to its departure from France. The crew suspected that something was terribly wrong although they could not point their finger to it. They awaited further instructions.

After an unexpected delay, the temporary government instructed it to land in Kfar Vitkin, a small town along the Mediterranean coast half way between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Soon thereafter, the offload of most of the weapons commenced. Most of the refugees were brought to shore.

Menchem Begin came to greet them. Suddenly, some shots were fired at them and they all hurried back into the ship. Begin instructed them not to fire back. “There will be no war between brethren,” were his words. They obeyed him.

From there, they sailed to Tel Aviv, flying a white flag which was visible to all. Their only wish was to negotiate. As they approached Tel-Aviv, heavy shelling of the boat was what welcomed them. The shooting came from what was known as the “Red House” – the headquarters of the Haganah. That is where the Tel Aviv Hilton stands today.

The shelling and shooting never ceased. The wounded were evacuated from the ship under fire and those who could, jumped into the water and swam ashore. Manny was one of them.

Manny pointing at the Altalena as its survivors, himself included, are swimming ashore. Notice his tattooed number A19762


Today, Manny and his beautiful wife, Rachel live a rewarding life here in Yisrael. They are surrounded by the love of their three children and ten grandchildren. His son, Yaron Minkoowski is a world renowned and one of Yisrael’s top fashion designers. Yaron married his beloved wife, Pazit Yaron Minkowski, a well-known Yisraeli actress, in 19.7 (the first three digits of Manny’s Auschwitz number). Their daughter, Ori Minkowski, 16, followed in the footsteps of her father and is now the youngest fashion designer in the world.

Manny (second to Left) in the company of  his three children (two daughters to his right), four of his grandchildren. His son, Yaron in the middle and his granddaughter Ori in front of her father, Yaron. To his left is his beautiful and talented wife Pazit Yaron Minkowski. To the left of Pazit is Rachel, Manny's amazing wife of 60 years.

For Manny, Hope and Survival undoubtedly transformed themselves into one big Celebration of Life. We wish him many more years of Health, Celebrations and sheer Bliss.