It meant certain death at the hands of that murderer. Everyone knew the meaning of a command such as this from this murderous fiend. When I heard this terrible order my hair began to stand on end. At one he started screaming and shouting and rained down murderous blows on my head and body. I didn't want him to think I had stolen it so I told him it was ein G-tteskleid (a G-dly garment) which I had brought with me from home. He had never seen a tallit katan before and he ordered me to explain. When he felt under my tunic and discovered the tallit katan, he was enraged: What is this? he shouted. He noticed the slight bulge that the tallit katan caused under my tunic and ordered me to come over to him. He had been a German communist and for his sins, had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Nazis. His main job was to see that no one took more than one tunic. It happened when I was just coming out of the bath house. men, I could have been struck dead on the spot. (How I had managed to keep it in the camp, where every single possession was taken from us on arrival, is another story). I had cut it out of the ornamental tallit which used to belong to my grandfather, the saintly Rebbe of Sziget. I had a tallit katan with me in Auschwitz. The accounts are taken from the preface to his book Mekadshey Hashem (Sanctifiers of the Name), a collection of response written by great rabbis of Eastern Europe who perished in the Holocaust (published in Chicago, 5715-1955). Rabbi Meisels, a survivor of Auschwitz, became, at the war's end, Rav of Bergen-Belsen and Rabbi of the British Zone of Occupation in Germany and later Rabbi of the Congregation Shearith Yisroel in Chicago. The following two episodes are personal accounts of events in Auschwitz written by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels. But this is also a testimony to the liberation which marked the beginning of a new era. They report on their families, their parents, their loved ones, but first and foremost, theirs is a testimony, a warning memento for their descendants for the generations to come about the Holocaust, the ghetto, the deportations, the compulsory labour and all the suffering connected with these. They recall memories of the city in which they were born, where they were educated and where they spent their youth. This chapter contains a collection of reminiscences by those natives of Zemplen County and Satoraljaujhely who today live in Canada, the U.S.A. Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary (English pages 163-208) « Previous Page