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PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

A photograph taken of Rabbi Lau after liberation, on his way to a better life.

A Testimony of FaithRabbi Yisrael Meir Laus MemoirBY GAVRIEL HORANRabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, currently the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, chairman of Yad Vashem, and the former Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel, is one of my heroes. His tale of faith and triumph as a young boy during the Holocaust provides us with a model of personal greatness in the face of unimaginable hardship. Rabbi Laus bestselling autobiography, Al Tishlach Yadcha Al Hanaar (Hebrew, Yediot Sefarim), has just been translated into English. Out of the Depths (Sterling Publishing) tells the story of his miraculous journey as an orphaned refugee and how he became one of the leaders of the Jewish people.

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Bound by Miracles on to describe how he had Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was born in We wonder what gave worked twelve-hour shifts 1937 in the Polish town of Piotrkow, where this young orphan boy, delivering water to the who witnessed more his father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, Hyd, glass factory workers in a death and destruction served as the Rav. When he was only five, previous forced labor in his few short years his family was brutally torn apart. His camp when he was only than most of us could father and middle brother were taken to six. Therefore, you imagine, the strength the death camps, while he, his mother, cannot say that we lack to survive six years of and oldest brother remained in hiding. His working potential, he hell. Furthermore, how fathers last instructions to his son, concluded. did he manage to pick Naphtali, fondly called Tulek, himself up and rebuild were to protect his little brother, his life from nothing in Lulek, as the young Rabbi Lau Eretz Yisrael? was called. You cannot explain one A few years later, Rabbi Laus moment of my survival without mothers final wish was the same. using the word miracles, Rabbi For some reason, they both felt Lau stated passionately. When I that their youngest son was get up in the morning and recite destined to carry on the Modeh Ani, thank You to Hashem thousand-year-old family for restoring my soul, I also have tradition of serving the Jewish an additional intention that nation as rabbis. Hashem did return my soul. For At the age of seven, young three years I was surrounded by Lulek was bereft of his entire corpses. Every morning in the family except sixteen-year-old camps block many people did not Tulek. They ended up in the wake up. I pushed the wagon of Buchenwald labor camp, where, dead to the crematorium each day. miraculously, both brothers were Even after liberation, 60 percent of liberated. To this day, Rabbi Lau the survivors of Buchenwald died says that this happened largely of typhus and other diseases before due to Naphtalis constant selfthey could even begin to start their sacrifice. However, in the book, he lives again. I was in the valley of recalls the speech he made to the dry bones. camps diabolical commandant When I say thank You, I really that saved his life. mean it. Hashem performed Despite the fact that seven yea countless miracles for me. This old Lulek was the youngest and This photograph of Rabbi Lau and his brother Naphtali (L) was taken gives me an extra motivation not smallest prisoner in Buchenwald, in Ecouis, France, after liberation, before they journeyed to Palestine. to waste my life and to do Rabbi Lau recalls the speech he They are pictured holding mugs of milk. (Inset) Rabbi Lau when he something to justify all the made to the Gestapo was one year old. This is the only pre-war photo of Rabbi Lau. miracles that happened to me. I Commander who threatened to could have ended up on the street have all the children amongst the criminals, but Hashem exterminated. Together with a bribe, the speech saved trusted me. I am forbidden to disappoint It is a mistake to think that we are his life and the lives of the other children Him. useless, he said in perfect German, going in Buchenwald at least for the moment.

An Unbroken Chain

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Excerpts from Out of the Depths

[My mother] grasped my back with both hands and shoved me in the direction of the men. I didnt understand what was going on. I only heard her say, Tulek, take Lulek. Good-bye, Tulek; good-bye, Lulek, and I never saw her again. Naphtali caught me he grabbed me with both hands and shouted in Mothers direction, What do I do? She just waved her hand at us, and the Germans shoved her toward a [cattle] car with the other women. The moment was intensely traumatic for me. The Germans forced Naphtali and me into the mens car, and seconds later the doors locked behind us. I screamed in terror and transferred all my rage at the separation to Naphtali, my brother. I beat my small fists against his chest unceasingly. He tried to hug me and calm me down, but I refused to be comforted. I kept hitting him and screaming, What have you done to me? Why did you take me? I want to be with Mother!... In retrospect, this was clearly the hardest moment I experienced in the six years of the war. Never before and never since did I cry as I did on that day of my separation from Mother. To separate from your mother is inconceivable; it hurts your whole being all the years of your life. It took me a long time to understand that when Mother pushed me toward Naphtali, she saved my life. Mother went her way, and we ours. We thought her way led her to Bergen-Belsen. Only when the war ended did we learn that on that day Mother was taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where she was murdered.! ! !

After the liberation of the camp, I stayed in Buchenwald for a while. Buchenwald was in the suburbs of the city of Weimar General Patton decided to invite the residents of Weimar to the camp, insisting that they view the horrors with their own eyes. ... Suddenly, a command car stopped next to me, and a giant American soldier lifted me. Gripping my heels in one hand and my shoulder with the other, he raised me high in the air and shouted in German to the Weimar residents: Do you see this little boy? This is who you have been fighting for the past six years. Because of him you started a world war. He is the enemy of national socialism, the Nazis archenemy. You murdered his father and mother, and you almost murdered him as well! You followed the Fuhrer for this! You followed him in blind faith for this!! ! !

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In my block there was a prisoner named Feodor, a Russian officer from Rostov, who acted as my guardian angel. He used to steal potatoes to make me hot soup. He unraveled strands of wool from a dark, patched sweater that he found among the workers and made me a pair of earmuffs using an improvised crochet hook. The Germans used to take us out at night for marches and roll calls, ordering us to remove our hats. Standing bareheaded in the freezing cold winter air of Buchenwald in northeast Germany, our ears regularly turned blue and froze. Each night Feodor would pass by me and check that underneath my hat I was wearing the earmuffs, so that if they woke us up in the middle of the night for another one of those accursed roll calls, at least my ears would be warm. I clearly recall several times when I stood in formation with the wool ear protectors in place, feeling blessed. Feodor himself stood at roll calls with his ears exposed to the cold. Forty-four years later, in 1989, when I traveled to the ... Soviet Union, I had a chance to tell Feodors story and pay tribute to him.! ! !

She was quiet for a moment, and then said something I will never forget: Your mother died in my arms. I was able to utter only two words: When? How? I am from Piotrkow. The day my daughter was born, I made up my mind that when the time came for her to stand under the chuppah [wedding canopy], you would be the one to perform her wedding ceremony. The son of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, the rabbi who had married my parents, would conduct the wedding for my daughter. The rabbi whose mother died at Ravensbruck would officiate at the wedding of a Ravensbruck survivors daughter. To me, the next generation is a kind of compensation for the horrors we experienced, she recounted. She, like myself, was barely able to control her emotions. Then she described how my mother had died, of hunger and weakness, not long before the liberation. My mother had managed to survive two and a half years of hell until her strength gave out. At Ravensbruck, the brides mother recalled, the other women of the camp were so fond of her that they did everything they could in order to save her. It was the sixth year of the war, and the women were starving, clothed in worn rags, barely dragging themselves through the winter snows. Whoever was unable to march to work was shot at the exit the Nazis would not waste the one-hundred-gram daily bread ration on an inefficient worker. My mother was no longer able to walk [but her friends] refused to give up and instead found a creative solution. Every morning at dawn, sixteen women, all of whom were just slightly less weak than Mother, clustered into a knot, standing her in the center and supporting her with their arms and shoulders. In this manner they walked her through the camp gate. The Germans counted heads, but they did not check the legs. Mothers head reached the height of the women encircling her, and so they did not notice her weakness. The brides mother was one of the women in that cluster who supported my mothers body until her last moments.

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The Cup Half FullHow can the rest of us, who have not experienced such open miracles, take inspiration from his story? A Jew has to believe that everything is a miracle from Hashem. Go to the hospital to see what types of suffering a person can experience in order to live for even one day. People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and consent to countless surgeries just to save a small percent of their eyesight. Yet we receive two working eyes as a gift from the Ribbono shel Olam, without suffering, without operations, and without paying money. Is it possible to waste that, to not recognize its value? Arent you filled with simchah, a feeling of joy, because you have these tremendous gifts? How can you not feel obligated to thank the One Who gave you these tools? Rabbi Lau shared with me a wise insight that has helped shape his life. An optimist sees the cup as half full. Someone once asked him how he can always talk about the full half and deny the fact that the other half of the cup is empty. The answer I gave him is that you cant quench your thirst from whats in the empty half, Rabbi Lau explained. If you are thirsty and want to satisfy your thirst, you have to pay attention to the 50 percent thats full. From emptiness, you have nothing. Therefore, in my life, I always try to pay attention to the full part because from it you can derive benefit and hope.

Rabbi Lau at the interview with Gavriel Horan.

Defeating the NazisRabbi Laus story stayed within him for over sixty years, until 2003, when, after completing his tenure as Chief Rabbi of Israel, he had two years free before returning to his position as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv. During that time, he wrote a sefer on halachah as well as a sixvolume sefer on Pirkei Avos, which has since been translated into English by ArtScroll (Rav Lau on Avos). During this period, he also finally had time to write his memoir, Al Tishlach Yadcha Al Hanaar, which sold over 200,000 copies the best-selling book ever produced by Israels

prestigious Yediot Sefarim publishing house. I realized that this time was given to me min haShamayim, he told me. Shortly afterward Rabbi Lau had his memoir translated into English, but it took him almost three years to find a publisher who would accept it without making any changes. How could I allow them to cut it? How can I decide who deserves to be mentioned and who doesnt? I said, Take it as is or leave it. At last, Sterling Publishing accepted it without any changes. Rabbi Laus motivation for writing his memoir was twofold. First, he saw it as part of the mitzvah of remembering what Amalek did to us. There are two aspects to this mitzvah, he explained. Dont forget and Remember. Dont forget is in the heart. Remember is an action. Lighting yahrtzeit candles, saying Kaddish, and learning Mishnayos for the departed are acts of remembrance. This book is also an act of remembrance, so that it

shouldnt be forgotten from the heart. This is a ner neshamah that I lit for the kedoshim. His second motivation was to teach people what he believes is the true lesson of the Holocaust. Many Jews abandoned Yiddishkeit because of the Holocaust. I did just the opposite, he said. We have no alternative but to attach ourselves to Torah and mitzvos. Why? Because we want to defeat the Nazis. The Nazis didnt only attack the Jews physically but also spiritually. Whats the proof? The very first thing they did before the war even started was to unleash Kristallnacht. They destroyed over a thousand shuls in a single night. Ten months before the war began, they were already fighting against synagogues and sifrei kodesh. This shows what their real intention was. They attacked our soul before our body. If we abandon the Torah, we are helping them win the battle. We must be victorious by clinging to the Torah. Our I eternity, our continuity, depend on it.

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