By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
It was a weekly chore young Yitzchak Shkop did not enjoy. At his father’s request, every Shabbos morning, he made his way to the apartment of Manis Zatnitzky in Bnei Brak, Israel. The Holocaust survivor lost his wife and six children in the Holocaust, and though he remarried, never had more children.
Manis, who sometimes called Yitzchak “my grandson,” greeted him warmly, gave him a bite to eat, and tested him on the Parshah. Still, Yitzchak would have preferred to play with his friends. When he complained, his father, Yisroel Shkop, merely replied, “If we could ease the pain of his loneliness even a little, it is worthwhile.”
One day, Yisroel called his son over and said that the visits were, sadly, no longer necessary and then he told him the following story:
In 1940, the Nazi Germans rounded up the Jews of Lodz, one of Poland’s largest cities, and confined them to a ghetto. At first, the ghetto was intended as a temporary holding location for the Jews until they could be transferred to concentration camps. Soon, however, the Germans began using the Jewish population as free labor in the city’s large industrial sector, producing supplies and ammunition for the war.
The shoe factory in the city was especially important. The soldiers in the German aviation, and later on the Eastern Front, were suffering from frostbite due to improperly insulated footwear. The army hoped that the insulated leather boots manufactured in Lodz would remedy the problem. Those who ran the factory were under strict instructions to accept only expert cobblers.
Yisroel, then a young man, heard that conditions in the shoe factory were good, and resolved to obtain an assignment there. He snuck into the factory and went from table to table, asking if they needed help. Each time, he received a question in reply: “Are you an expert cobbler?” It was difficult for him to lie, even to save his own life. He admitted to the foremen that he was not.
There was but one work station left. Yisroel was terribly dejected, but approached the table nonetheless and inquired if he could work there. The foreman replied, “Listen, young man, there is a bucket in the corner used for coloring hides. We need someone to mix the dye to maintain its quality.”
Yisroel gladly accepted his new job and immediately set to stirring the dye with one hand. After some time, the foreman asked to look at his hands. Seeing that his left hand was clean, the man yelled at him to mix with both hands. Yisroel obeyed. After a few minutes, the man came back. “Ah, now you are a cobbler,” he said. “Come, join my group.”
A short while later, having heard that someone had entered the factory without permission, an angry German officer stormed into the room.
When the German came to the table where Yisroel was sitting, the foreman came to his defense: “This young man is here at my request. He is a professional cobbler, and I asked him to work with us.”
Seeing that Yisroel looked the part, as both of his hands were stained with dye, the soldier left him alone. Yisroel remained working in the factory, while thousands of others were deported from the ghetto to certain death, and survived the war.
“Do you know who the foreman was?” Yisroel asked his son. “It was Manis, who just passed away. In his merit, my life was saved, and you are alive today.”
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