I was then a young married man. My chin was just beginning to
sprout a beard. The happiness of the first year of my
marriage and the increasing responsibility of my task seemed
to have drawn a rosy curtain over my life. Few can have been
granted that absolute feeling of serenity that I then
enjoyed. At least, that is how I see it today from the
distance of many years.
In fact, it was from no ordinary assortment that my soul had
been handed down me. I was the grandson of the Rabbi of
Bluzhov and related to the tzaddik of Dinov. Both my
father and mother could trace their family trees back to King
David. This noble dynasty had been known through the ages for
its exemplary discipline and its profound thinking. It
constituted an extraordinary aristocracy linked by stronger
ties to heaven than to the ball of mud we call earth. If I
recall the ethereal world of my youth I can only regard it as
a heavenly gift, that I had received without effort, ready
made, by the merit of my ancestors.
Nor was this all: by the Creator's favor I had been reared
almost like a royal child and thus the diamond hidden in the
depths of my soul did not remain concealed in its prison but
was uncovered and brought to the light.
Who formed, who polished, the gem of my soul?
Who if not the awe-inspiring prince: Grandfather!
You did not know Grandfather; you were too young to have met
him. But the truth is that had you been worthy of appearing
before this Titan with his eyebrows meeting, hiding behind
the dense smoke curling up from his long pipe, what would you
have seen? How much would you have guessed of his
extraordinary strength and greatness?
For your soul is no diamond. At best it is gold or silver,
nickel or copper, perhaps only iron, or not even that, only
mud. I do not intend to hurt you; you are what you have
become. Your souls have been roughened in the fire of
unrestrained passions by your fathers and mothers, your
grandfathers and G-d knows how many ancestors. The treasure
of your soul has been turned into peat in the course of long
centuries.
My soul was protected by my parents but, especially, by my
grandfather. He gave me much of his time. I was his favorite,
together with my little sister. He loved us both dearly. Why?
Because we obeyed his wishes.
The army of Chassidim — there were more than a thousand
of them — young and old, rich and poor, noble and wise,
and even the family sincerely hated the chief gabbai:
Gimpl.
My sister and I were on good terms with him and this won us
the love of our Grandfather. For Gimpl was the touchstone;
only persons who liked Gimpl were permitted to appear before
his face. Everyone else immediately lost his favor.
In general, Gimpl was considered a very disagreeable man. The
five attendants belonging to Grandfather's retinue trembled
before him, for Gimpl ruled over everyone like a chancellor.
The keys to the cash-box were always in his pocket and
whatever was needed in the house had to be asked of him. When
the Kvitlach were handed in, honorable old men, great
scholars, lay-heads of communities — all humiliated
themselves before him.
And how mercilessly Gimpl pursued the "Sheine Yidden"
when, with a tumult, they arrived and demanded to see my
Grandfather! Gimpl turned them out as if they were
undesirable elements. In vain did they plead that they
belonged to the family. They could rant and shout, but Gimpl
chased them away. He could not be circumvented, and anyone of
whom he disapproved could not see Grandfather.
This is how the distribution of the shirayim took
place. A whole boiled chicken was brought in to Grandfather.
It had to be a whole chicken because he desired it that way
— although he hardly ate any of it and gave away the
rest.
Who ruled over the leftover meat? Gimpl. As this despot had
an excellent appetite, he devoured almost all of it. Only a
neck or a wing and a few little bones were left. Eyes pleaded
with him from every side: "Leave us something, just a little
scrap!" — for even a crumb from the Rabbi's table was
equivalent to a blessing.
Gimpl did not dress like a chossid. He trimmed his
beard and wore a short jacket like the Germans. He stood out
in Grandfather's environment. It was rumored that Grandfather
could have had ten times as many followers had he not been so
strongly attached to this strange, repulsive and haughty
person.
Yet whenever this question was raised, Grandfather, the Rabbi
of Bluzhov, answered with a mysterious smile. It almost
seemed as if he had no need for the whole lot of them with
their copper, iron and mud souls.
Gimpl continued to enjoy his favor. What is more, the awe-
inspiring Grandfather with his joined eyebrows, stood before
the despotic bachelor like a humble servant before his all-
powerful master. If Gimpl objected to something — and
he usually did so in a very rude way — Grandfather
withdrew like a humiliated schoolboy.
I remember that I once asked Grandfather for a larger sum of
money for the family of a talmid chochom. He made a
sign to me to indicate that Gimpl would soon leave the room
and we could then discuss it. It was evening, time for the
distribution to the poor of the money brought in with the
Kvitlach. A large pile of money was on the table. I
stood behind my Grandfather's chair. Many people came, they
told him of their needs and waited. Grandfather's brows rose
high over the half-closed lids. Dense smoke came out of his
pipe as from a crater. Then, for a moment, Gimpl left the
room. Grandfather quickly scooped up a pile of banknotes and
pushed them into his cigar-pocket. He had taken it for me,
for my poor friends. But Gimpl was already back. He sniffed
suspiciously and looked at the table. The room was full of
people and all watched Gimpl, waiting with bated breath.
Gimpl's face turned a fiery red, even his neck blushed, then
he began to screech like a madman. His repulsive voice cut
like a whip.
"What has that snotty young man been doing again?" then he
turned to Grandfather and yelled at him:
"What is this, are we stealing again? Stealing again? Put
back that money where it belongs."
Grandfather turned pale and then, like a shamefaced little
boy caught in a prank, pulled the banknotes from his cigar-
pocket and put them back on the table. Gimpl picked up the
money and stuck it quickly into his own pocket.
After a while, the chassidim grew tired of this
unrestrained despotism and accused Gimpl ever more loudly of
mishandling the money. The accusation became generally known
and the younger men wanted the older chassidim to form
a delegation to my Grandfather and complain against Gimpl.
At first, the elder men did not want to stick out their
necks. What? That they should simply break in on Grandfather?
Do you know who Grandfather was? Even the ministering angels
trembled under a glance from his eye! There was not a single
movement, or half-movement, with which he did not join
worlds. Even a gesture of his little finger sufficed for
that! Should the older men, those who revered him most
deeply, rebel against him? They who melted in the fires of
his lofty soul, should they disturb his mood?
But the accusations against Gimpl became so loud and general
that there was no way of avoiding it. That step had to be
taken. And, one day, the old men stood before Grandfather,
their knees trembling, the words sticking in their
throats.
"Gimpl . . . "
Grandfather raised his terrible brows and his ears began to
waggle, a sign of extreme anger. Then he pronounced the
annihilating verdict:
"He who judges the deeds of his Master is as if he were
criticizing the Shechinoh."
And with this the audience was ended.
The poor, humiliated, silly little old men sat in the waiting
room weeping, until my Grandfather felt sorry for them and
sent word that they were forgiven.
Gimpl's position remained solid as a rock. It was obligatory
not only to respect him but to love him as well.
I had learned a great deal from Grandfather in those
unforgettable hours when we remained alone in the room and he
shared with me his solitude. Particularly the hours of the
night were intimate; radiation of my soul had gathered
strength and warmth within me. I was the one who protested
most loudly against this dreadful sin.
*
But now I am lying on the planks, half-conscious, in the
throes of a horrible semi-sleep. Then suddenly as if I were
coming to my senses, an unknown force begins to drum on my
chest. In the afternoon I agreed with Leizer, who was working
side by side with me, that today we would not go to fetch the
soup, a horrible concoction of suspicious color that never
contained anything but a few beetroots — and yet, it
gave life.
In the camp, if someone gets tired of living, he simply stops
rising from his bunk, stops fighting for his breakfast, and
the rest is easy. Leizer and I decided that we would not join
the queue for food. Let the curtain fall.
I lay on my planks in a condition bordering on the
transcendent. I knew that soon the last thread binding me to
the areas of this side of the border would break.
And then a strange change took place within me. As if a force
beyond me had again lit the extinct flame of my soul, as if,
in the complete darkness, a strong lamp had been lit, a
blinding light, as from a reflector, struck my eyeballs and,
in the glaring brilliance, I saw a supernatural,
phosphorescent apparition.
Grandfather!
There he stood, with his joined eyebrows and pale ivory face,
as if we were arguing about a "sugya" and I were
saying:
"According to the letter of the law, only if someone hastens
death in one way or another is it to be considered a sin."
I saw Grandfather's face twitch and passionately he snatched
at my arm:
"No, no, my son!" he shouted "Know once and for all that he
who does nothing to prevent death is also committing a sin.
That too is suicide!"
The apparition disappeared. But the will to live revived in
me.
You came at the last moment, Grandfather. I thank you. You
foresaw my fate. That is why you implanted the law so deeply
in my soul. Your gaze, scanning the future, saw the terrible
suffering of your grandson and his struggle with himself in
the camp of Janow.
And I, who was half dead already, revived under the effect of
this miraculous vision, I jumped from my bunk and ran to my
friend and fellow-prisoner Leizer. "Tomorrow, we shall stand
in line with the others for soup! We shall fight for life! We
shall live, because we have been sentenced to life!"
R' M. D. Weinstock was born in Hungary in 1922 and
received both a Yeshiva and higher secular education. He
survived the Holocaust in a Forced Labor Camp, but lost most
of his family to Nazi brutality. R' M. D. Weinstock was
editor and writer of several Orthodox Jewish papers in
Hungarian from 1953-1979.
