A Torah Comes Back

In their wildest imagination, I don't think the Jews in a small town in Poland, dreamed that this Torah would find its way to safety, back to its people. 

When my oldest daughter was 17, she called and told me of a summer trip to Poland for groups of girls who attended schools that didn't sponsor trips there. In Israel, it was very common in 11th or 12th grade for the school to organize such a trip. The goal was not for vacation but to gain a lesson that would last their whole lives. Some schools chose a different path, scheduling time to sit with survivors and learn about the Holocaust.

My daughter wanted to go there, and she insisted that I go with her. I pretty much told her she was insane. I had a baby at home. Not really a baby, but almost. How could I leave a two and a half year old for 8 days? It was ridiculous. Impossible. 

For days, the thought of leaving my youngest child alone destroyed me, and for days, the thought of my older daughter going alone did the same. "Ima, I need you. I don't want to go alone." Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that both would cry, but that the two-and-a-half-year-old wouldn't remember her tears, while the teenager would forever remember crying alone. And my "baby" wasn't alone. She would be with her father and her three brothers. Friends would help if needed...and still, it was a painful choice for me.

In the end, I went to Poland. In the weeks before we left, there were group meetings to listen to speakers who prepared us to descend into the darkest moments in Jewish history. During those meetings, two Rabbis spoke about Chelmno. Chelmno was the first Polish extermination camp. It's where the Nazis started killing Jews in "gas vans" until they could find a more "efficient" way.

As soon as the Jews were loaded in the back of the van, the Nazis connected a pipe through which they funneled exhaust fumes back into the sealed truck until they were sure they had murdered all the Jews.

The Rabbis told us about Chelmno, and then they told us about the baby. You see, for all the many years since the Holocaust, the Rabbis and others have known that buried within Poland are remnants of the Jewish world that lived there before 1939. For a ridiculous sum by Western standards, they continued to pay Poles to "search" and report what they found. 

One day, the Poles contacted the Rabbis. They had been digging around Chelmno, and had found a ladder. The Rabbis were not very impressed. The Poles explained that the ladder was what was attached to the back of the gas vans in which thousands of Jews were murdered. A historic find, certainly, but not something that would send the Rabbis rushing to purchase a ticket and fly to Poland as they did days later.

It was when the Poles told them that under the ladder was the skeleton of an infant that the Rabbis scrambled to Poland. The infant was a 3-day-old baby whose name will never be known. He was born and taken with his parents to Chelmno. His parents must have thought they could save the baby by placing him behind the ladder. And there his remains were found more than 50 years later.

Afterwards, I approached the Rabbi and asked him what they did with the baby's remains. He said they buried him with his parents, near the mass graves of Chelmno. And it was then that I got angry. "Why?" I asked them, "why didn't you bring him home to Israel and bury him here?" 

His answer was that the Poles wouldn't let him and that made me even angrier. I was angry much of the time in Poland, even when I cried. My young daughter claims she remembers crying the week I was gone, but going was the right decision for my older daughter, and ultimately for me as well. It was a life-changing event for both of us.

And the picture of the Torah above? I don't know if it is connected with those Rabbis. But today news came that this Torah scroll had been found, hidden in an attic in the small village of Wisznica, not far from Lublin. Just before the synagogue was burned down in 1940, the Jewish community gave this Torah scroll to a local farmer. The story becomes even more incredible because it was the Jewish community that burned the synagogue down. In doing so, they prevented it from being desecrated by the Nazis, who had ordered the synagogue to be evacuated so that they could use it for a bathhouse and laundry. And in burning it down, they were able to save the Torah.

The farmer hid the Torah in his attic and he and his wife kept it secret for decades. Before his wife passed away, she told her daughter of the Torah scroll hidden in their attic. The daughter went to the Chief Rabbi of Poland, who told her that it should be returned to the Jewish community, since the synagogue to which it belonged no longer existed. 

Instead, she held onto it for 30 years, and only now, on the 85th year after it was entrusted to her family, she finally returned it. Over the years it was damaged but it is believed that it can be preserved and sadly, will remain in Poland. No Jews remain in Wisznica, only a cemetery and some tombstones tell the story of a town where Jews lived for centuries.

They believe it was hidden to protect it from the Nazis. And now it has finally completed its own journey back to the Jewish people. I hope one day it will come home.

Credit for the story and picture here (and "Polish media"): 

https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1712246