Extraordinary Risks
Observing Yom Kippur in the shadow of death.
Rafael Medoff
I JNS.ong
H
olocaust memoirs and eyewit-
ness testimony record how Jews
living under Nazi rule repeatedly
took extraordinary risks to mark Yom
Kippur in some way. Despite the grave
dangers involved, and even though Jewish
law permits eating or performing labor
on the Day of Atonement in order to save
one's life, many Jews endured unimagi-
nable suffering in order to commemorate
the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.
In his diary, Rabbi Shimon Huberband
described his experiences in the Polish
town of Piotrkow in the aftermath of the
September 1939 German invasion. The
occupation authorities imposed an astro-
nomical fine on the local Jewish commu-
nity, with Yom Kippur as the deadline.
To demonstrate the punishment to
be expected if the money was not paid,
the Nazis seized a number of local Jews
at random on the eve of Yom Kippur
and took them to Gestapo headquarters,
where they were "beaten, attacked by
dogs, forced to crawl on their stomachs
... forced to clean toilets with their bare
hands ... [and] ordered to collect shat-
tered pieces of glass with their mouths:'
Rabbi Huberband's diary (published in
English under the title Kiddush Hashem,
edited by Professors Jeffrey Gurock and
Robert Hirt) noted that the local Judenrat,
the German-appointed Jewish ruling
council, "dispatched notices saying that
everyone should contribute his designated
ews
•
•
amount toward the tribute by tomorrow,
the last day."
At the same time, because all public
observances of Yom Kippur had been out-
lawed, a debate broke out as to whether or
not Jewish shopkeepers should open their
stores, lest they be accused by the Germans
of closing them in honor of the holiday.
Rabbi Huberband records the remarkable
"honor system" scheme the Jewish shop-
keepers devised to avoid doing business
on the Day of Atonement while eluding
the Nazis' ire: "Jews' shops were open. The
`salesmen were all women. Actually, the
women didn't sell anything; people took
merchandise, but without paying for it. The
women didn't take any money, but they did
on the other hand give away money. They
took their tribute payments over to the
[Judenrat] office, Yom Kippur being the last
day, the deadline for the tribute'
Professor Yaffa Eliach's book Hasidic
Tales of the Holocaust recounts the horrors
endured by a Hungarian Jewish slave-
labor battalion attached to a retreating
German army unit in 1944. The prisoners
were routinely beaten, starved and used as
human mine detectors.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, the German
commanding officer, aware of the
approaching Jewish holy day, warned
them that anyone who fasted "will be
executed by a firing squad."
On Yom Kippur, it rained heavily along
the Polish-Slovakian border region where
they were working, and the area was cov-
ered in deep mud. When the Germans
distributed their meager food rations, the
I Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News
At The Movies
Opening on Friday, Sept.13, is
a)
Insidious 2, a horror/fantasy like the
first Insidious (2011), which cost $1.5
million to make and earned $95 mil-
lion at the box office).
Once again, Patrick Wilson and
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demons from "the Further," who want
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who was killed in the
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Shaye
54
September 12 • 2013
ILI
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Actress Rosanna Arquette, 54, mar-
ried investment counselor/manager
Todd Morgan, 65, last month in a pri-
vate ceremony. Attending were a few
friends (reportedly including Barbra
Streisand, 71) and family members.
Arquette, the daughter of a Jewish
mother and a non-Jewish father,
has always been the most Jewish-
identified of the well-known Arquette
acting siblings (her brother David
identifies as a Christian while her sis-
ter Patricia is unaffiliated).
This is Arquette's fourth marriage.
Her six-year mar-
riage to hip restaura-
teur John Sidel pro-
duced her only child,
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Morgan, a former
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Jewish prisoners pretended to consume
them but instead "spilled the coffee into
the running muddy gullies and tucked the
stale bread into their soaked jackets:'
Those who had memorized portions
of the Yom Kippur prayer service recited
them by heart until finally, as night fell,
their work ended and they prepared to
break the fast.
Just then they were confronted by the
German commander, who informed them
he was aware that they had fasted, and
instead of simply executing them, they
would have to climb a nearby mountain
and slide down it on their stomachs.
"Tired, soaked, starved and emaciated:'
the Jews did as they were told — 10 times
"climbing and sliding from an unknown
Polish mountain, which, on that soggy
Yom Kippur night, became a symbol of
Jewish courage and human dignity"
Eventually the Germans tired of this
sport, and the defiant Jewish prisoners
were permitted to break their fast and live
— at least for another day.
Isaiah Trunk's classic Jewish Responses
to Nazi Persecution cites a remarkable
anecdote from an Auschwitz survivor
about Yom Kippur in the women's block
there in 1944.
Minutes before sundown, the Jewish
barracks leader, or Blokowa, suddenly
"put a white tablecloth over the barrack
oven, lit some candles and told all the
Jewish women to walk up and pray. ...
The barrack was filled with an unbearable
wailing. The women again saw their anni-
hilated homes."
1980s and founded a wealth manage-
ment firm. In 2011, he was honored
with the L.A. federation's Spirit of
Humanity award for establishing, in
2002, the Morgan Aging with Dignity
Fund, which helps Los Angeles-area
Holocaust survivors.
Monaco Circus
I expect many of you have already
read that Princess Charlotte, 27, the
only daughter of Princess Caroline of
Monaco, is engaged to marry comedic
actor Gad Elmaleh, 42, and is cur-
rently carrying his child.
Elmaleh, who was
born in Morocco, is
very popular with
French and Arab
audiences.
In some sense,
he fits right in as a
prospective member
of the Grimaldis,
Elmaleh
The main gate of the Birkenau
concentration camp, which was among
the places where Yom Kippur was
observed in the shadow of death by
Jews during the Holocaust.
It happened that "Froh Rohtshtat, the
famous violinist from Lodz, was also
kept in our barracks:' and the barracks
leader "brought in a fiddle and asked Froh
Rohtshtat to play Kol Nidre. She refused,
saying she couldn't play because her heart
was bursting.
"The Blokowa threatened to beat her
... if she didn't play. When Froh Rohtshtat
began playing, the Jewish Blokowa sud-
denly lost control and started pushing us
away and clubbing the Jewish women, yell-
ing, 'Enough! You've had enough pleasure!"'
"What was the reason for the Jewish
Blokowa's sudden change of mind?" Dr.
Trunk wondered. "One can only guess that,
fearing the inmates would see how she
was overcome with emotion by the solemn
tones of Kol Nidre, she would thus be seen
in a state of weakness and would conse-
quently lose the firm grip she had on them:'
To maintain her position as a barracks
head, the Blokowa needed to forsake all
Jewish connections and feeling — and for
a few fleeting moments, the emotional
power of Yom Kippur had threatened to
touch even her iron heart.
❑
Dr. Rafael Medoff is founding director of
the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust
Studies. His latest book is "FDR and the
Holocaust: A Breach of Faith."
a family that has never been con-
strained by "middle-class" morality or
class/ethnic divides when it comes to
romance.
Princess Caroline's aunt, Princess
Antoinette, had three out-of-wedlock
children with her married lover
between 1947 and 1951; Caroline's
paternal grandmother, Princess
Charlotte, turned her Paris-area
estate into a refuge for ex-convicts
and took a famous former jewel
thief as her lover; Caroline's sis-
ter, Princess Stephanie, was long
involved with an elephant trainer
who was then married to someone
else – her second ex-husband is a
Portuguese acrobat, and she has a
child with another guy she never mar-
ried; Caroline's brother, the reigning
Prince Albert, has two out-of-wedlock
kids: one by an American waitress
and another with an Air France flight
attendant.
❑