Do I Have the Right?

By Rabbi Michoel Oishe for COLlive and Hasidic Archives

I knew the man from synagogue. He seemed intelligent, content, polite—an elderly gentleman from another generation. A G-d-fearing man with a number on his forearm.

One day, I sat down next to him and asked if I could ask a question.

There is much that I don’t understand about the Holocaust, I said. But one thing that I cannot even begin to grasp is how the regular Germans behaved. They were not devils. They were not barbarians who grew up in the wild. As children, they played ball. They fought with their siblings and loved candies.

How could people fall into such evil?

The man became serious for a moment, then gave me a wide smile. I am not sure that his reply answered my question, but I’m glad I heard it from him. This is roughly what he said:

“On Yom Kippur, we read about the Ten Martyrs, the great Mishnaic sages who were brutally murdered by the Romans. After their deaths, the Midrash recounts, the angels asked G-d what He was thinking: ‘This is the Torah? And this is its reward?’

“G-d replied with a powerful rebuke. ‘If I hear another sound, I will turn the world to water, to its [original] emptiness and desolation, for it is My decree; accept it, all of you who love the Torah [that preceded Creation] by two thousand years.’”

“What kind of answer is that?” the old man asked. “Is G-d saying, ‘Keep quiet. Don’t make Me angry now. I am a little crazy at the moment’? Or does G-d fear that He cannot control Himself? Is He saying, ‘Hold Me back tightly, or I’ll smash this guy’s face in’?

“Not a day passes when I do not think about Auschwitz,” the man morosely told me, “and Auschwitz will never leave me. But how many years does a person live? Seventy, eighty, perhaps ninety? What kind of perspective can we have?

“This is what G-d was saying,” he continued. “‘Let’s return to the time when the world was created. Come and receive a much broader perspective than you can currently accept. Then tell

Me if you understand tragedy or not.’”

His words made me glad and sad at the same time. If I were a “person who has seen affliction,” then I would have the right to say this.

I merited to hear it from the mouth of one who suffered, but will I have the right to tell it to my children?

An excerpt from the forthcoming book In the Trenches: Stories from the Front Lines of Jewish Life in Russia, it can be pre-ordered here. Find more of Hasidic Archives latest books on HasidicArchives.com. Hasidic Archives books are also available in bulk.