It wasn't the most exciting or terrifying tale of the war
years I had ever heard, or the saddest or the most shocking.
But somehow it was the most moving one.
The man who recounted it had spent the war years, his
teenage years, in the chilling vastness of the Siberian
taiga. He and his Polish yeshiva colleagues were guests of
the Soviet authorities for their reluctance to assume
Russian citizenship after they fled their country at the
start of the Nazi onslaught.
He had already spoken of unimaginable, surreal episodes,
fleeing his Polish shtetl with the German advance in 1939,
of watching as his uncle was caught trying to escape a
roundup of Jews and shot on the spot, of being packed with
his Jewish townsfolk into a shul which was then set afire,
of their miraculous deliverance, of the long treks, of the
wandering refugees' dedication to the Torah's commandments.
And then he told the story.
We were loaded onto rail cattle-wagons, nine of us, taken to
Novosibirsk, and from there transported by barge to Parabek,
where we were assigned to a kolchoz, or collective
farm.
I remember that our first winter was our hardest, as we did
not have the proper clothing for the severe climate.
Most of us had to fell trees in the forest. I was the
youngest and was assigned to a farm a few miles from our
kolchoz. The nights were terribly cold, the
temperature often dropping to forty degrees below zero,
through I had a small stove by which I kept a little warm.
The chief of the kolchoz would make surprise checks
on me to see if I had fallen asleep, and I would recite
Psalms to stay awake.
One night I couldn't shake the chills and I realized that I
had a high fever. I managed to hitch my horse and sled
together and set off for the kolchoz. Not far from
the farm, though, I fell from the sled into the deep snow
and the horse continued on without me. I tried to shout to
the animal to stop, to no avail. I remember crying and
saying Psalms for I knew that remaining where I was, or
trying to walk to the kolchoz, would mean certain
death from exposure. I forced myself to get up and, with
what little strength I had left, began running after the
horse and sled.
Suddenly, the horse halted. I ran even faster, reached the
sled and collapsed on it.
Looking up at the starry sky, I prayed with all my
diminishing might to G-d to enable me to reach the relative
safety of the kolchoz. He answered me and I reached
my Siberian home, though I was shaking uncontrollably from
my fever; no number of blankets could warm me. The next day,
in a daze, I was transported to Parabek, where there was a
hospital.
My first two days in the hospital are a blur, but on the
third my fever broke and I started to feel a little better.
Then suddenly, as I lay in my bed, I saw a fellow yeshiva
boy from the kolchoz, Herschel Tishivitzer, before
me, half frozen and staring, incredulous, at me. His feet
were wrapped in layers and layers of rags -- the best one
could manage to try to cope with the Arctic cold, without
proper boots. I couldn't believe my eyes -- Herschel had
actually walked the frigid miles from the kolchoz!
"Herschel," I cried, "what are you doing here?"
I'll never forget his answer.
"Yesterday," he said, "someone came from Parabek, and told
us `Simcha umar,' that Simcha had died. And so I
volunteered to bury you."
The narrator paused to collect himself, and the reflected on
his memory:
The dedication to another Jew, the dedication . . . Had the
rumor been true there was no way he could have helped me. He
had immediately made the perilous journey -- just to see to
my funeral! The dedication to another Jew ..such an example!
. . .
As a shiver subsided and the story sank in, I wondered:
Would I have even considered such a journey, felt such a
responsibility to a fellow Jew? In such a place, at such a
time? Or would I have justified inaction with the ample
justification available? Would I have been able to maintain
even my humanity in the face of so doubtful a future, not to
mention my faith in G-d, my very Jewishness . . . ?
A wholly unremarkable story in a way, I realize. None of the
violence, the tragedy, the horrors, the evil of so many
tales of the war years. Just a short conversation, really.
Yet I found so valuable a lesson in the story of Herschel
Tishivitzer's selfless, unhesitating concern for little
Simcha Ruzhaner, as the narrator had been called in those
days: what it means to be part of a holy people.
The narrator concluded his story, describing how Herschel
Tishivitzer, thank G-d, had eventually made his way to
America and settled in New York under his family name,
Nudel. And how he, the narrator himself, had ended up in
Baltimore, where he married the virtuous daughter of a
respected Jewish scholar, Rabbi Noach Kahn. And how he
himself had became a rabbi (changing many lives for the
better, I know, though he didn't say so) and how he and his
rebbetzin had raised their children in their Jewish
religious heritage, children who were continuing to
frustrate the enemies of the Jewish people by raising strong
Jewish families of their own.
And I wondered -- actually, I still do -- if the slice of
Simcha Ruzhaner's life had so affected me only because of
its radiant, blindingly beautiful message -- or if perhaps
some part was played by the fact that he too, had taken on a
shortened form of his family name, Shafranowitz, and had
named his second child Avrohom Yitzchok, although everyone
just calls me Avi.
(c) AM ECHAD RESOURCES
Rabbi Avi Shafran serves as director of public affairs
for Agudath Israel of America.
