The Three Types of Believers

to answer your very complicated and difficult question let me divide survivors from the holocaust into three groups one group who completely lost their faith after witnessing all these atrocities barbarism inhumanity seeing their own children sent to the gas chambers seeing their parents killed see seeing their siblings brothers sisters some of their wives being killed so they thought to themselves the jewish concept of god hashem is omniscient he knows everything hashem is omnipotent it's is almighty hashem is also awful compassionate and merciful how can such a omniscient almighty god who knows everything how did he permit such atrocities such a humanity especially we are the man we are also the amsterdam the beloved people the cherished people this chosen people there was god when we needed him in such a times six million innocent jews they saw their own children thrown into the gas chambers how could you reconcile the idea of god who's omniscient he knows everything he's almighty he's all merciful with permitting such atrocities so they came to the illogical conclusion you have to say there's no god because if there would be god how can they allow the body to intervene at the best if god does exist it's a god who's indifferent to human suffering he resides somewhere in the seventh heaven he doesn't care what goes on in this physical world so who is such a god so some people came to this conclusion we have to say either god does exist all together or if yes it's a god who doesn't care for human suffering so stop believing there's another group of jews whom i would call the status quo jews who before they came to auschwitz they believed in god observant jews in auschwitz they still believed and still were observed to the extent what a person could could observe after they came back for the camps still believe when someone asked such a person how could you believe when you yourself saw this tremendous savagery this tremendous suffering how can i still believe in god so their answer is who are we to understand god don't do the same prayer in the high in the high holidays or shame keeper and and actually also every night in kishamita they pray before we retire at night after your day arose only god knows the mysteries the secrets of the world so how can we understand hashem's base god's ways can a little ant understand human mind we are a distance between us and god is a further a bigger chasm than between an ant and a human mind intellect so this was the answer and says just like the famous mishnike we don't understand it eventually we are going to understand so they dismiss this question because human mind cannot fathom the almighty infinite god this is a third another verse this remains the status quo whatever before in the camp they believe before they can believe and afterwards they still believe then there's a third group that not only they do not deny the existence of god like the first group and they're not in the status work a group who just maintained their muna their faith but actually what they witnessed in the holocaust that even strengthened individual ramona they care coming coming out from from the of all these death camps and witnessing things the miraculous things which happened to them they say they are more convinced than ever there must be a god let me tell you a little little story that the famous rebel is bardichever he was a well-known scholar and genius even before he got married he's even a young man he got married and after a year of marriage he said to his wife he she should excuse him he wants to learn go to the shiva of the medicine bag the market of message who was the successor of the baltimore his wife gave him permission and after year he came back his father was very furious after a year of marriage you leave my wife by my daughter and you leave her you go to this year what did you learn but you didn't know before you brought the wilderness scholar even before what did you learn she answered i learned there's a god in the world there's a god his father-in-law became very upset this is what you learned that's why you have to leave a man leave my my daughter for a whole year this is my maiden nose there's a god and he calls calls his mate and he says by the name rocco is there a god says so for sure there's a god so i said what did you learn the bodhisattva said she says and i know in other words she says meaning she believes but i'm convinced that there's a god so let me say all my humility with all my humility i belong to the third group that are more convinced than ever before although we were religious jews before we came to to auschwitz but what i went through this even strengthened my ammunition i'm more convinced than ever before but we learned there must be a god in the world let me start again with a little story and here in new york lower east side there's a famous street called orchard street orchard street the vendors keep their merchandise outside on the street and you can get the best merchandise for bargaining prices very cheap very good prices you can wear the best shirts by shoes mesh trousers best suits hats very cheap many years ago i went on purchase i orchestrated with my wife and we didn't go to a twitch shop we just had to go through orchard street and as a vendor stops me says young man having beautiful beautiful shirts their bargain prices very cheap prices why do you come in but you step in our store you'll be able to pick up beautiful shirts for very cheap prices so i tell him indeed i like very much nice shirts especially if i get very cheap but now is not the time i should look for shirts even at cheap prices she is why not says because it's friday afternoon this is manhattan i live in brooklyn and crown heights they still catch two two buses it's late in the afternoon so i'm hurrying to get back home before shabbos so this person hears that because of shabbos i'll forgo such beautiful shirts and for such a good prices he says for shabbos you forgo these beautiful shirts what shabbos why shabbos for shabbos you forgot so i said what do you mean for me shabbos is something very important and i start to explain to him he says young man shabbos doesn't mean anything the whole torah has been anything and god does mean anything so he'll have a challenge that says what do you mean shabbos doesn't mean anything torah doesn't mean anything hashem god doesn't mean anything he says to me young man if you would see what i saw but you would if you would experience what i experienced you would speak in the same way and he said so i asked him tell me what did you see what i didn't see what did you experience what i didn't experience so he put his hand on that bit in his chest he says i was in auschwitz and after auschwitz you can't believe in god so certainly not in torah in shabbat after above i signed auschwitz impossible believing god so tell him tell me dear man how old were you when you were in auschwitz says to me i don't remember 22 23. said well i was 10 years old when i was in auschwitz he looked at me like i'm exaggerating you know there are no children came out from auschwitz so what did i do i pulled back my sleeve opened up my shirt and i showed him my tattoo this person this vendor was shocked he was speechless he saw a little child a young boy 10 years old which everybody perished in auschwitz and here he went through and i tell him i wasn't known in auschwitz i was in seven different death camps examination camps i still believe this person became as white as my shirt he went back to his office in the store he slumped down his easy chair and his head down he was lost in his thoughts i hear although i was unhurry but i wanted to continue the conversation about the importance of shabbat and still can believe but i i this person completely was immersed in these thoughts lost in his thoughts looking down like this and he didn't speak so my wife said it's getting late to get back to crown heights so let's go home so i said good become the next time we come to orchard street by cameron notre street i'll continue my conversation and then i'll buy by him and uh shirts it became back maybe six or eight weeks later again we have to pass through ortho street we came to the store there's no more this vendor a different store owner on this he has this new store on there what happened to the old store owner since it does not exactly sold the store and he doesn't know what happened to him so my part is only educated guess that he saw he thought that after auschwitz after all these death camps a person cannot consciously intellectually logically believe in god here is a little child who went through six or seven death camps and still maintains his belief in god a foreign shabbos is important changed his life he sold this store because on orchard street you cannot be a successful vendor if you keep the because of competition if you keep the stores open the side is going to sell this store and wherever it's going to go open us store another wherever he's going to go he'll keep shabbos so here we see that diameter two poles before he they said it's impossible to believe and he is a little child but he was on 10 years old and he still believes very firmly now you can answer the question what made me i said i belong to the third group that not only that i didn't lose my faith and i not only had remained status quo at the same level but truly after the holocaust experiences by believing god is so much more stronger more logical more convincing to myself what is it what made it so let me tell you if you have a dice you throw down the dice and you it comes out number six see it's a luck number six the best number when you play a game you get a dice number six the best the best number how about after you throw the dice a second time you get again number six what will you say it's lucky how about the throw the third time and still get number six so you're very lucky but however this reoccurs time and again every time you throw the dice in every times number six something must be going on naturally sachin is impossible because something recurs again and again and again something is going on so let me just tell you i saw nissim and mossy miracles if i'm here today more hashem like i speak to you i can answer your questions but i went through seven death camps i was on the on the verge of death of the threshold of delts of death time and again and nevertheless i survived it's only about nissinism miracles upon but miracles so let me just tell you abramovino into the fiery furnace he came out the life is a physical phenomenon it's natural everybody tell you it's unless a miracle how can a person have a burning furnace if fire comes at our life how about the neil daniel he was thrown in the lines of them who were not fed for the whole week you are throwing the lines then shouldn't the lies devour him he came out alive is it a miracle obviously because it's not the natural things i in alliance then not being fed for several days they're thrown in a living person they should immediately kill him devour him so everybody will say this is not a natural phenomenon it's a miracle i was also in the final in the burning furnace it was also in lines then let me tell i was twice the clutches of mengele i will not remember who the this thumb the flicker how they just moved this flam flicked his thumb to the left the ass chamber right over a million children sent to the gas chamber he came to me and asked what about what's my age i don't know i'm 17. he started to laugh and says i know that you're not you're only 11. i wasn't 11. i was only at only 10. let's go to the father after another time also in the in the clutches of mengele you should send me to the gas chamber yet ask over a million and a half but bengal didn't send then half children only one million but how many mil how many hundreds of thousand jews the flicker of a finger he said to the gas chamber was twice in his clutches and bar hashem both times his fa he didn't send me to gashimba and i was saved let me just jump ahead to the death march when the jews were evacuated from auschwitz to germany because the russians came they didn't want to leave any any witnesses um um uh in auschwitz so the oldest hundreds of thousands of jews were evacuated to germany why is it called the death march because people died there like flies on both sides of the people we were marching piles of jewish corpse jewish dead bodies i had a heavy leather boot and i didn't have any socks marching or january february march this heavy winter snow freezing freezing and this heavy leather boot bore into my leg with my foot and it kept on scraping away the screen the skin until the flesh the muscles until it scraped away it boiled away until the bone every time as we were marching the boot went into the snow i had to push the boot and it scratched my bone i saw every star in the sky from the pain eventually i simply the pain from the ankle went up all the way to the thigh i just could not move anymore it's where this foot was completely out of commission i couldn't move so i thought to myself i won't be able to march many more miles let me just move out a few a few inches from the line but you must you know that the yak is so punctual if anybody moved out a few inches from the lining or the shot that's why you have the piles on both sides so i thought to myself let me just move out from the pile from the line and i'll be one of those piles upon body as i made this firm decision it's impossible the pain is so tremendous that i can't move anymore i made this decision to move out suddenly a thought came to my mind i remembered a friday night suda at home czechoslovakia friday night it was the custom of my father always to tell stories of sadiq but all these milk stories so i remembered one storage my father said friday night the hostage came to the balshemptev and yuji marcos it comes to arabia stayed there for a few days he was there and suddenly middle of the night a message comes from to him a message from his wife that unexpectedly she's going to labor of course if she would have he would have known he would have left his wife but he thought maybe it's it'll be another few weeks and but she goes suddenly into labor and those days were no doctors or nurses or hospitals everything was done at home with a midwife but midwife needed somebody should help she could do everything herself so he should immediately come home because she's going to labor and she'd come help with the midwife and this was the middle of the night between mezebus that bashemthev was living this town was a dense forest this forest was at night infested with robbers gangsters thieves rapists so at night at night people were afraid to go through this forest during that time many people events it wasn't so dangerous but at night people were afraid to go now his wife asked we should come immediately she goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night he says my wife asked when she come immediately she's going to labor but i'm afraid to go alone so barshentev said since your wife needs you go immediately insofar as you say that you are afraid to go alone and jew never goes alone you understand what barcelona meant a jew never goes alone is always hashem goes with him these are the more of the story that's what my father said friday night to the children and also the guests that you should always know don't be afraid of anything i i do never goes alone and suddenly this story this more this teaching came to me suddenly i remembered it this gave me such a strength that i'm not alone and i decided not to this the death to move out and i continue push because hashem will help me so how long could i push maybe another half the day another a another a day but eventually the pain not only came to my side from this time over to my shoulders my left side completely out of commission i just simply my left side i couldn't move anymore so how can you walk so again after a day or a day and a half after the story i came to college it's impossible i should survive perhaps this is completely i can't move with my leg and same pain and i can't march so as i made again the second time this decision to move out and this will be the end of my suffering believe me suddenly a person came to me and started to be a conversation in his death march there was no conversation every bubble just himself to see how long can we survive don't forget we didn't get anything but to eat what did we eat under muddy snow when the ss were tired and we rested for a few hours we scraped away the snow and the ice and we start to dig into the ground and luckily we found a earthworm this one otherwise we just eat this body snow so completely emaciated without any strength in this pain yes so everybody is thinking about themselves how can you survive and suddenly nobody just like for example we got for a bit here on a boat and the boat sinks capsizes everybody jumps out and starts to swim to the shore we'll start a conversation tell me who are you what's your name where you come from everyone's thinking just how to save themselves this was the situation in the death march so and suddenly this person comes over to me i was also surprised but nobody spoke everybody's thinking about himself how can you survive and we started a little conversation and eventually i find out he comes from the same sibling just like where i come from but he was one of those twins which i didn't mention the twist and mengele didn't kill you in auschwitz but actually he was actually much older than me he was already also 89 years old so i tell him listen this is my condition half of my body is out of commission kaput i can't and i can't just jump hop on one foot so i just move out you are much stronger much older than me you'll come back to where i come from to cautious and shakes like here hope films are shabbosas shame my parents also come back you tell them where i was shot where i was killed maybe i'll be still there they'll take me bring me home give me a i could be i'll be buried in a jewish cemetery i shouldn't run away they're gonna die she says no no no no listen do don't do that i you'll see that you'll survive says hawk and i said well i can't move she says to me i'll help you ask him what can you help me can you drag me can you slap me can you drag me can you pick me up he says no no put your hand on my shoulder and you just go so the left foot you don't have to carry the walk on the left foot bend the right foot and i'll slap you so good accepted this and for another two or three days it was okay but let me ask you how long can you hop on one foot my left foot i couldn't move anymore i didn't feel it anymore and he actually helped me but i just had to hop on my right foot and slap drag my left foot after me after three days even my right foot i couldn't walk anymore so i tell him again listen i'm very appreciative i'm very grateful you did for me that you pronounced my life another two three days but i can't continue it's impossible my foots are also going out of commission i cannot do it so it says i'll just move out and please notice where i'll be shot and to tell my parents the place in germany where i was shot as i even he couldn't dissuade me anymore i shouldn't i shouldn't give up he saw that i just wouldn't walk anymore listen in this moment ss comes over to me an ss and starts with a conversation and i knew for my mother tongue was german i spoke a perfect german she had this conversation with me and after a few minutes i tell him but listen i just can't move anymore let me move out and you shoot me says no no no i promise you you'll survive the war and you meet your parents and your sister the only one sister said but how can i can move and was so hungry she takes off from his belt takes off the canteen and he gives me the canteen and the cathy was hot black sweet black coffee as i drank a gulp down this black coffee was truly truly just like our sages tell us when the tree is amazing the revival of the dead hashem revived the death that it's called taltria the jew of revival i experienced the destructive revival when he gave me this black coffee it went to every vein every artery every muscle every arm every part of my body it just invigorated me re-energized me and i could walk and i finished the canteen the bottle of the black coffee and then he disappeared i never wondered where where did he go because we had to go very fast and maybe had to watch other other uh inmates but every few hours every three hours the german reappeared and continued the conversation and every time he took off the canteen after a few minutes speaking and he gave me the canteen and this truly thought here this invigorate me and he energized me gave me an understanding once i was in a reverend on a very between poland in germany a very high mountain and much made this in february it's very cold freezing cold we march up to a very high mountain and down the smile smiles my ears were freezing so i tell him everything is good and well do i have the coffee i give multiplication gained a little strength but my ears are freezing he takes off his ear cap the asses cap i mean as his cap puts it on my head pulls that down over my ears i was walking marching with his asses cap and he was marching a beer-headed without any doubt if any assets would see that i've assessed cap that would immediately shoot me but anyways and then again he gave me the coffee and by this time he already married my father but the business of my father but he studied with the whole family my grandparents because they always have the conversation once he comes to me and he starts also the conversation and usually after five ten minutes he would give me the coffee firstly we just engaged in a conversation and afterwards he would give me the coffee this time after five ten minutes nothing so i tell him but this time i saturday i'm entitled new raise the coffee no where is the coffee so he opens up takes off the the canteen opens up the canteen tips upside down that i even i don't have any more coffee so i tell them if that's the case let me out from the from the line and shoot me because i can continue just saying no no no no don't do it i promise you before and let me add to it again i promise you you'll survive the war and you'll meet your parents but i have no strength i can't walk anymore remember i was walking with my arms on the shoulder of my friend i said i can't march anymore he says in for six kilometers from now we come to a german town i go to the first house on the way and i get you coffee because i can't walk but i can't match this six six miles she says to me i'll help you so i was marching holding the hand on my friend and his asses were holding his hand under my arm and slapping me for the next kilometers please ss and indeed we came after six kilometers we came to the first germans town he went to the ger at uh the house we of course we had to give fast ahead he ran he ran after us and he gave me the coffee this time it wasn't any more sweet but it was hot like black coffee i drank it and he says to me now please give me back my cap i gave him back his cap he disappeared i never saw this essence again when i came back from auschwitz ashish when i mentioned auschwitz i mean old it's a genetic term for all the camps i myself was six seven death camps but this is the generic term for all the camps and came back from the holocaust auschwitz so i started to write my experiences when i came to this episode and i mentioned described but much greater detail the death march what was going on in the death march this is only what i told you the tip of the of the iceberg so i came to the to this ss when he asked me i should give him back his cap and then i mentioned who was this ss knowing that hitler sent the germans to the camp the scum of the earth the biggest murderous rapist gangsters who was afraid to keep them in germany so that they should be all our overlords they didn't have any feeling any compassion for any jew for every jewish child the murder do you eat a million and a half suddenly essa should have mercy compassion a little little ratchet child that maybe perhaps perhaps jesus elianovi in disguise as a german then i mentioned from the gomorrah which mentions a number of places where they were just censored in the disguise of a human being an arab and so on and so forth to help a jewish child so i said maybe maybe perhaps this was also you know he came to help me and he schlepped me and gave me the coffee and i felt so invigorated when he gave me the coffee but then i concluded even suppose it wasn't a lenovo it was actually a german ss but knowing who they were these diverse criminals who the most careless vicious people for them to can to kill a jew meant nothing this essence should suddenly have a little rahmannas compassion a jewish child he's not less of a of a miracle than rosalia novi and let me tell you this is truly just the tip of the iceberg of the listeners of the threshold so many times of death and in the nick of time something happened how can i not believe so that's why not only that i believe theoretically i saw i saw the hand of god who saved me let me make this suggestion that one survivor who came out from auschwitz survived in a natural manner only miraculously but as our sages tell us in balance machi everybody recognized and many times america can happen that person and himself does recognize this is a miracle so many people all those who lost their faith if they were themselves would you ask them how did you survive tell me what happened to you they should tell you that their life stories how did this happen how did this happen you have to come to collusion is something supernatural they themselves will also see the help the hand of god how come if hashem helped me and say all of those mirrors of jews who did survive how come hashem didn't help my father for this only hashem knows the answer but those who did survive his only appendicitis as the result tells if a person has a dream and has in his dream a hebrew birth in which his hebrew word has a letter noon in it so then you should know americans will happen to him habits are persons that dream in which the world is not only one noon and this will happen you have the two nouns so nation is miracles of a merciful happen for me not only the the word the very word of my name is listen miracles so day in and day out satellite i mentioned a fraction of the things which i went through which every logical person objective person would say how does this happen it's only about nissan is him and my name is nissan so therefore i'm more convinced than ever that master because what was holding my hand just like barshemptov says you never goes alone you

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

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Length: 36min 18sec (2178 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 08 2021