The appearance of our Rabbi Lau, Shalita, on televistion on Saturday night, the Tenth of Tevet 5733 (1973), caused a great stir among our Piotrkow brothers and sisters and became a topic of conversation. Small wonder, since his words penetrated every sensitive heart, particularly the hearts of our Piotrkow Jews. The following is an excerpt from the rabbi's program, which he entitled "Ani Maamin" (I believe), recalling his life as a child in the Nazi hell.

Editor of Heidim

Naphtali Lavie and his brother in 1945 after the liberation from Buchenwald.		Many years later: Rabbi Lau, Chief Rabbi of Netanya; Naphtali Lavie, Senior aide to Moshe Dayan.

"I believe with perfect faith" – these words by the Rambam (Maimonides) became the hymn of those who died for Sanctification of the Name. Tomorrow is the Tenth of Tevet, the first day on which the calamity of the destruction of the Holy Temple started, leading to the Babylonian exile and the other exiles of Israel, the day chosen as the general memorial day for our six million martyrs who were lost in the Second World War in the most horrible of all the calamities that befell our people, without our knowing their place of burial, and without their having been given a Jewish burial as their ashes were scattered all over Europe, and with even their date of death having been unknown.

We shall not attempt in this program to investigate the Shoah. We shall perhaps attempt to touch on one point which I consider central – the great faith and inspiration of those millions, who appeared to be led like sheep to the slaughter, but whose spirit was not broken. Their flesh was consumed by the flames, but their soul remained pure and they could sing and hope even during the most difficult moments of human life…

Piotrkow, my home town, was a city in Poland which had some 22,000 Jews at the beginning of the Shoah. Students of Torah around the world will recall Piotrkow because of the cover pages of many holy books which were printed in the Hebrew print of that town. It had Jewish organizations from Agudath Israel to the socialist Bund. It had vibrant Torah life and a great variety of activities.

I was about two years old when the war broke out. Despite my young age, I recall scenes of horror which I am sure will never leave me.

My father, Rabbi Moshe Haim Lau, HYD, was the last rabbi and spokesman of Piotrkow even in peacetime, when the attitude of the authorities was good. It was especially during the war and in time of trouble that my father's house became a center of public activity and a place for people to bring their personal problems.

It was in that home where I grew up that I first learned about life during the time of oppression and hardship. My mother was also active in the charitable organizations of the ghetto in Piotrkow.

I particularly remember the scene when I said goodbye to my father. It was in the deportation yard from where Jews were sent to Treblinka. Father was left in the yard. Mother, my brothers and I were thrust into the synagogue, from where the transport was to depart. We were able to escape from there at dawn, but my brother Shmuel, HYD, was forcibly separated by the Germans. Mother's screams reverberate in my heart to this day. But they were to no avail. The next time we had to line up in the yard to complete the quota for the Treblinka transport, father saw to it that we were not sent to the yard, hiding us instead in an attic.

Mother pleaded with father to hide with us, but he refused. He said that everyone knew him and of his existence, and if he was not seen in the yard they would look for him and find hundreds of Jews who were hiding throughout the ghetto.

When mother and I came out of hiding in the attic, we no longer saw father. It was his last journey to Treblinka, and only a few survivors who came back from there, from the gas chambers, were able to tell us about his last speeches, his last words; “For you shall go out in joy,” the confessional prayer he would recite in public, and the singing of Ani Maamin.

We were separated from our father and, a short time later, from our mother, who left us in the train station; only after the Shoah did we find out that she had died during the last months of the war in the Ravensbruck death camp, where she had died of hunger in the arms of a woman whom I met here in Israel.

I remained with a much older brother, who took the place of my parents, and wandered with him from Piotrkow to Czestochowa and from there to the death camp at Buchenwald, Germany, leafing behind the ruins of houses, synagogues, public places, with towns and villages in flames. Jewish Europe disappeared without a trace, with only the remains of walls bearing silent testimony to what used to be. As Gebirtig's poem, “Brother, Fire in the Village,” expresses it, “There is fire, brothers, the fire is burning.”

I was taken to Buchenwald by my brother inside a knapsack, for it was a camp for men, not for children. My brother took me there after he snatched me from a train that was going to Bergen Belsen so as not to leave me alone.

In Buchenwald we were first in Block 66, where Jews were kept. Conditions there were infernal. A Polish doctor, himself a prisoner, took pity on me and cut the letter “P” from a corpse of a Polish prisoner and sewed it on my clothes; thus I was transferred as a Polish child to Block 8, where Russian prisoners were kept, near the gate of the camp. There, conditions were much better. I met a Russian officer named Fiodor who took care of me like a son and made sure I ate cereal or potato soup every day.

One day, while I was in the yard of Block 8, I saw a group of exhausted prisoners in striped uniforms, known as Musulmen, being dragged toward the camp's gate. Suddenly I heard one of them calling, “Lulek” (diminutive for Israel). It was my brother, whom I had left behind in Block 66, who was now being brought over with the other persons to the train taking him to his last destination, the death train. He ran towards me, held out his hand across the barbed wire fence, and said, “I would like to talk to you openly. You are now a big boy (I was seven and a half); you are the last one remaining. I don't know if you will survive, or whether this hell will ever end. I am going away and I shall not return, but if it ever ends and you survive, remember that there is a place in this world called Eretz Israel, where you have an uncle. Ask them to take you there. Tell them your name and ask them to look for your uncle. They will find him by the name, and you will not be alone. I am going. Goodbye, Lulek.”

I did not know what to say. If I had the right words for him at that time, I would have said in Yiddish the words of the Song of the Partisans, which we know in Hebrew: “Do not say you are going on your last way.”

As I said before, I am not going to attempt an investigation of the Shoah. I would like to point out to you so that you may believe that Jews stressed their singing, their faith, and clung to their heritage as much as they could, more than they stressed their pain and tears.

My story ends in Buchenwald on January 9, 1945; then I arrived with my brother, who was saved in spite of everything, in Eretz Israel, where I was born again. I carry everything in my head, I see and hear everything, but above all I hear the plea of the Martyrs: “Do not only remember six million dying to sanctify the Holy Name. Remember them living to sanctify the Name, with Shema Israel on their lips and Ani Maamin in their mouths, the voice of bursting faith – I believe with perfect faith.”

  Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2008 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 2 Nov 2006 by LA