The Klausenberger Rebbe, the leader of a Hasidic Jewish community in Poland, was separated from his wife and 11 children upon arrival in Auschwitz Birkenau. Left alone in the world, the Rebbe sat in the barrack, and for the first time in his life, he cried. He had never cried before, but on that first Saturday morning in the barrack in Auschwitz, he cried to G-d: “Why has everything been taken from me?”

The Holocaust is a breaking point in the relationship between humanity and the Divine. How can one continue to believe in a Righteous G-d who cares about the Children of Israel, the Jewish people, in the darkness that follows this horror?

After hours of the Rebbe’s crying, a man walked into the barrack. He brought bread with jam so that the Rebbe would have something to eat that was somehow kosher. With this act of kindness to give him strength, the Rebbe found he could carry on. This was an act of G-d, he thought, taking and giving.

The Rebbe held onto that belief. He was sent with the other men in his barrack to forced labour – pulling concrete and stones up a hill. One day, halfway up the hill, the Rebbe fell. All the men knew that if he did not get up, he would be beaten to death. The men around him began to wonder where they would bury him. But the Rebbe got up.

As they continued up the hill, one of the men asked the Rebbe, “Will you still say, ‘You chose us from all the people’?” The Rebbe answered, “Maybe I did not say that with intent until today, but now, I will say it with even more intent. If I was not a Jew, maybe I would be that Nazi officer.”

……..

On Yom Kippur, three months after liberation, the Klausenberger Rebbe expressed the anger and grief that encompassed everyone who had passed through the darkness.

“Ashamnu – Did we sin? Bagadnu – Were we unfaithful?… Were we, G-d forbid, unfaithful to G-d and fail to remain loyal to him? Gazalnu – did we steal? From whom did we steal in Auschwitz and Mühldorf? … Maradnu – We rebelled? Against whom? We rebelled against you, Master of the Universe?…  This Vidui (confession) was not written for us.” He closed his machzor [holiday prayer book].

“But,” he thundered anew, “we are guilty of sins that are not written in the machzor… How many times did many of us pray, ‘Master of the Universe, I have no more strength, take my soul so I will not have to recite Modeh Ani (morning prayer) anymore’?… We must ask the Almighty to restore our faith and trust in Him. ‘Trust in G-d forever.’… Pour your hearts out to Him.” (Yom Kippur 1945 Fährenwald DP Camp, Germany)

The Rebbe knew that somehow, they must rebuild Jewish life, even in the aftermath of the horror of the Holocaust. Perhaps most especially in its aftermath.

On the evening of that same Yom Kippur, the Rebbe had sat in his room in the Displaced Persons (DP) camp, getting ready for his first Day of Atonement as a free man. A knock on his door took him away from his thoughts.

A girl stood outside his door crying. “Why are you crying?” the Rebbe asked her. “What is wrong?”

“It is the evening of Yom Kippur and my parents are dead,” she told him. “Who will bless me before the fast? What do I do? My father used to bless me before the fast began until he was killed by them….”

The Rebbe put his hand on her head and blessed her. The girl left the Rebbe’s room, and within minutes a queue of children stood outside his room waiting for their blessing. Later in his life, the Rebbe said, “I had 11 children who were killed in the gas chambers, but in the DP camp, I had, within one day, 80 children.”

……..

On that same Yom Kippur, General Eisenhower, the leader of the American forces in Europe, came to visit the DP camp. He wanted to see what was being done to restore Jewish life. Everyone from the DP camp gathered to listen. A long table was set up for the dignitaries. The American delegation agreed that the Rebbe could speak first, but they had conditions: he could not mention G-d; he could not talk about the Holocaust, only about the return to life; and he must speak briefly.

The delegation came to the DP camp and took their places at the long table. As the Rebbe walked over to greet General Eisenhower, he picked up a Tallit (a prayer shawl). He said the blessing for wearing the Tallit, mentioning G-d in the process. The first rule broken.

The Rebbe turned to the people. That they had all been saved, he told them, that they had been through the Shoah and saved by G-d, that they were still alive, meant there was a purpose and a mission in this world. It meant that they had a purpose in living. The people listening wept, feeling for the first time that they could cry. There was nothing left to say.

In spite of his having broken every rule the Americans set for him, the Rebbe’s speech moved the General. “What can I do for you?” the General asked. The Rebbe replied, “Today is Yom Kippur. In four days, we will start Sukkot. Could you get for us the four species (the four plants necessary for the rituals of Sukkot)? That is all we need now.” The General had the four species flown out from Rome to the DP camp.

……..

The Rebbe went on to visit other DP camps, collecting the broken people and bringing them back to life with conversation, with tears, and with the conviction that there is a point to living. With the certainty that there is a purpose in restoring the emuna (belief) in G-d.

The Holocaust was indeed a breaking point in the relationship between humanity and the Divine. There were many who asked the question, how can one continue to believe in a Righteous G-d in the darkness that follows this horror? Some lost their faith in the Almighty and found they could not get it back. In the midst of the questions, the Klausenberger Rebbe’s ability to believe and bring hope and life back to his community was a light in the darkness.

As we confront violence, injustice, and both personal and global crises — in new forms and old —many of us are again asking how we reconcile belief in goodness or a higher purpose with the suffering that exists in the world. The resilience shown by the Klausenberger Rebbe serves as a powerful reminder that even in the darkest times, it is possible to find hope, rebuild communities, and sustain faith. The Rebbe’s example challenges us to consider how we, too, can strive to find hope and believe in a better future.

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