For My Father, A Survivor

An address by Rabbi Yossi Goldman at Holocaust Remembrance Day, Martyrs Monument, Westpark Cemetery

I address you today in honour of my late father of blessed memory, Reb Shimon Goldman olov hasholom, and in memory of his father Shmuel Zanvil, his mother Menucha Kraindel, his brothers Yaakov, Yosef, Tzvi Hirsch and Chaim, and his sisters Chana and Leah, all of whom perished at the hands of the Nazis.

I speak to you today not as a Rabbi, but as the son of a survivor. My father was not in a concentration camp, but he is the sole survivor of his entire, large family.

My mother bless her soul, was from the same shtetl as our community’s beloved late Rabbi Aloy, olov hasholom, but my father was born in Poland. He came from a distinguished family who traced its lineage back to many great rabbis, including the famous Biblical commentator, Rashi.

To me, it was quite an amazing act of Divine Providence that compelled him to run away from his hometown, Shedlitz, at age 14. He wasn’t a rebellious boy or even an adventurer. Yet he ran away from home and that saved his life! His parents though it would all blow over but he had an encounter with German soldiers and decided to leave with other families who were going. He fled to Vilna. There, he managed to obtain a precious Transit Visa from the legendary Japanese diplomat in Kovno, Chiune Sugihara. From there, he and his fellow yeshiva students travelled to Moscow, across Russia by train to Vlodivostok, then by boat to Kobe Japan, where they spent a year. When japan joined the war, they had to move to Shanghai which was an open port. They were in Shanghai until the war ended, finally coming to New York when the central Lubavitch Yeshivah there was able to send them visas for the United States.

He’s not even certain whether his family’s last days were spent in a place called Treblinka or Majdanek. They have no graves, no tombstones, there aren’t even any photographs. Oh yes, there is one solitary photograph of my father’s sister, Chana, and her fiancé, their yellow armbands clearly visible, in the Warsaw Ghetto. I have that original photo hanging on my dining room wall here in Johannesburg. My paternal grandparents? I don’t even know what they looked like.

Every year, my father would observe one day in the year, the 12th of Elul, as yahrtzeit for his entire family. He lit one single yahrtzeit memorial candle for his father, mother, brothers and sisters. A large family – they were all remembered on one day, with one candle.

He hardly ever spoke about these things over the years when we were growing up. It was only in 1990 at our son Mendel’s Bar Mitzvah that I asked him to let me interview him for my Jewish Sound radio show that he agreed and finally opened up. Thank G-d, we were able to help him publish a book with his story. Now his grandchildren know the heroic tale of his voyage of survival.

I once asked my father, how it was that he never lost his faith. After all, so many survivors did, and who are we to question them after the Hell that they went through. But my father never lost his faith. He answered my question by saying that, somehow, he always felt the protective hand of G-d plucking him out of one danger to the next, from one country to the next, from one continent to the next, throughout his long, sad but inspirational, escape from Europe.

There were a few Yeshivahs with refugee students in Shanghai. The largest one was the Mir. My father was in the Lubavitch yeshivah there. During the day, the students sat and learned Torah, as in all yeshivahs. It was only once they went to bed, in the stillness of the night, that one could hear the sobbing of these teenage boys who had come to the sad realisation that their families had perished and that they were now all alone in the world. Can you imagine what they were going through? It is a miracle they never lost their minds, never mind their faith!

Ladies and gentlemen, by the amazing curiosities of the Almighty’s vast eternal plan, yesterday, was exactly 30 years ago, since the Bar Mitzvah of our eldest son, Yochonon, who is today a Rabbi in Philadelphia. My father, who had come to Johannesburg for the occasion, at the Sydenham Shul Brocha, asked if he could say a few words. And he made a little speech. The large hall, packed with people was hushed as my father told his story. He took us back to 1939, to his Polish shtetl, Shedlitz, when he was 14 years old. He was walking down the street with his father when the German Stukka dive-bombers suddenly came out of the sky and began shooting anyone in sight. His father grabbed him and threw him down, face first, together with him, into a cabbage patch. He said the planes were so low that they could hear the Nazi pilots laughing as they shot up the town. His father said what every Jew is meant to say before he dies, the Shma, and Viduy, a prayer of confession. They fully expected these to be their last moments on earth.

“And today,” said my father back in April 1987, “that boy in the cabbage patch is celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of his eldest grandson, here in South Africa, in Sydenham Shul!”

South Africa did not have any Jewish immigration after the war to speak of. We don’t know too many survivors here in this country. My friend Don Krausz is a notable exception. He is one of a small band of holy heroes who we pay tribute to today.

I’ve been in South Africa for over 40 years. But I grew up in New York and in the little Shul where I davened every morning in Brooklyn, there were quite a few survivors from the camps. In spite of all their sufferings, they never lost their faith either, and they came to Shul every morning. And each time they would roll up their shirtsleeves to put on their Tefillin, they revealed the blue tattooed numbers on their arms. The mark of Mengele. There were so many of them, that to me it became commonplace. To me, those blue numbers were a badge of courage, heroism, sacrifice and remarkable faith.

I once heard my saintly teacher, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of sainted memory, say that since the Nazi plan was that there should be no Jew left alive, therefore every one of us here today is a survivor! A baby born in Johannesburg TODAY, in 2017, whose parents were born here, is also a survivor!

And survivors have a responsibility – not only to tell the story but to rebuild our world. Every Jew must raise a family and we Jews should have bigger families of knowledgeable, committed, proud and practicing Jews. We should not be under any burden to adhere to Zero Population Growth. We are still minus Zero! We have yet to properly replace our numbers from before World War 2!

And please don’t leave it to the Rabbis and Rebbetzins! G-d bless them, they are trying hard, but they cannot do it alone!

I once heard about a fellow who had a large family and every time his wife gave birth to another child people would ask, “So when are you going to stop already?” He got so tired of this question that he developed the definitive response. The next time his wife gave birth and someone asked him, “So when are you going to stop already?” you know what he answered? “When I hit Six Million!” End of discussion. No more questions.

If it was our destiny to go through the death camps of Auschwitz and Ravensbruck, it was not our destiny to die. Our divine destiny is not only to survive, but to live, and to flourish as Jews, wherever we may be.

And in so doing, we bring the world to its destiny, to the ultimate age of global peace and harmony, with an end to all wars and bloodshed, an end to terror and tyranny, to the great day of the final liberation of all of humankind when G-d will finally “wipe away the tears from all faces,” the day of our redemption, the time of our righteous redeemer. May it be speedily in our day.

Dear friends, my father was a qualified Rabbi and Shochet. He chose to make his living in the Kosher meat business. He was a respected communal worker who, together with my late mom, ran a Gemilus Chesed Free Loan Fund, and he was on the Board of the Beth Rivkah Girls School which he served with tremendous dedication. And more. Their home was always an open home and so many South Africans enjoyed their warm and gracious hospitality over many years. But my father’s proudest achievement was the family he rebuilt from scratch.

My father passed away nearly six months ago on 29 Tishrei / 31st October at age 91. On his tombstone in the Moses Montefiore Cemetery in New York the very first words are a phrase from the Prophet Zechariah, Ud Mutzal Me’eish – an ember rescued from the flames. Thank G-d, he managed to rebuild his family and more. Every time a child was born in the family, for him it wasn’t only a simcha, it was another powerful act of Jewish defiance, reminding the world that Hitler (yemach shemo) did not win!

Thank G-d, at the time of his passing, my father left a family and a legacy of over 100 blood descendants, including over 80 great grandchildren!

May his memory be blessed.

Am Yisrael Chai!