AMONG THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SLAVE LABORERS AT Mauthausen and its many satellite camps was a young lad named Moshe. He was brought there in 1944 together with thousands of inmates from Auschwitz as the eastern front approached. Moshe was fourteen years old, son of the head of the Bobov Yeshiva, and the sole survivor of a large family. Young Moshe was a fervent Hasid, a devout believer in and follower of the grand Rabbi of Bobov, Rabbi Ben-Zion Halberstam. The rabbi's wisdom and saintly appearance, and the beautiful melodies that he composed, attracted many Hasidim to Bobov.(1) The rabbi had a special interest in young people, and they responded with unlimited admiration and youthful enthusiasm.

Each Friday night young Moshe with all the male members of his family would walk to the rabbi's house and welcome the Sabbath there with dance and song. Moshe's favorite melody was the one to which the rabbi chanted the holy Zohar, the mystical Book of Splendor. Moshe was convinced that when the angels sing before the Lord, they sing the rabbi's Zohar melody.

When Moshe was torn away forever from his mother's arms and separated from his father, he had no idea that his beloved rebbe was no longer among the living and his holy lips would no longer chant the beautiful melodies. For on "Black Friday," July 25, 1941, Aktion Petliura was unleashed in Lvov. The Grand Rabbi of Bobov, Rabbi Ben-Zion Halberstam, and his family were among the 2,000 Jews who were arrested. Four days later, on Monday, the fourth day of the month of Av, Rabbi Ben-Zion Halberstam, dressed in his silk Sabbath kapote and his tall shtraimi (fur hat), marched to his death. He was urged to escape. "One does not run away from the sounds of the Messiah's footsteps," replied the Rabbi of Bobov and continued to walk in his dignified stride in the direction of Janow, where the open pits in the forest were waiting. He was murdered by the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators. May his sainted memory be blessed.

In the misery of Mauthausen, young Moshe never lost faith in the rabbi. He was sure that the rabbi was guiding him and watching over him even amidst the intolerably harsh realities of the camp. The image of the rabbi as he had seen him on many Friday night visits to the rabbi's house was constantly before Moshe's eyes. In the bleakest moments in camp, in spite of physical exhaustion from his slave labor at the granite quarry or at the subterranean aircraft factory, in moments of despair and hunger, he felt the presence of the rabbi next to him. The rabbi's soothing voice comforted him and commanded him to live.

Wherever Moshe went, he felt the Bobover Rabbi guiding his steps, almost as if the rabbi were pulling him and pushing him, often in directions opposite those he would have chosen to follow. When Moshe's strength failed, he would try to concentrate and remember the beautiful melody with which the rabbi chanted the holy Zohar. The memory of that melody would fill him with courage and determination to go on. At times Moshe wanted to cry, to weep, to express his pain and anguish, but his tears would not respond; all the wells of tears had dried up together with all other signs of humanity. Moshe would then concentrate on the rabbi's Zohar melody, and tears, warm, human tears, would fill his eyes and stream down his hollow cheeks. The melody of the rabbi filled his being and momentarily dispelled the harsh realities of Mauthausen.

A bitter cold Austrian winter descended upon Mauthausen. Many of the inmates died of exposure, disease, and starvation, but not Moshe, by then a fourteen-year-old bundle of skin and bones. He was clinging to life with all his fervor and belief.

It was a cold December day in 1944, "delousing day." The prisoners' tattered striped uniforms were exchanged for clean ones and they were all chased to the showers across the camp's huge square while the Kapo took the eternal head count. While the inmates were in the showers they heard the sudden, familiar order: "Zeilappell!" Roll call! Kapos with truncheons and clubs began to chase the still wet prisoners into the camp's square, into the howling winds of the subzero December winter. Naked, wet living human skeletons lined the square. The ritual of the head count began. There was a discrepancy between the list in the Kapo's hand and the number of prisoners in the square; one was missing. The head count began again but the discrepancy persisted. An hour passed. The naked people began to be covered with a thin layer of white frost; breathing became more and more difficult and people began to fall on the snow like frozen laundry dropping from a clothesline. The search for the missing man continued. The ranks of standing prisoners became sparse, while the rows of bodies on the trodden snow grew longer and longer.

Young Moshe tried to move his feet and his hands, but his body no longer responded to his will. He felt that he too was slowly freezing into a pillar of ice, being drawn and pulled to the white snow on the ground beneath him.

Suddenly he felt the Rabbi of Bobov, Rabbi Ben-Zion Halberstam, supporting him. The rabbi's reassuring voice rang in his ears: "Don't fall, my young friend, don't stumble! You must survive! A Hasid must sing, a Hasid must dance; it is the secret of our survival!" The rabbi's melody was burning in his head, ringing in his ears, but his frozen lips could not utter a single sound. Then slowly his lips began to move. A note forced its way through the colorless lips. It was followed by another and another, individual notes strung together into the rabbi's niggun, his melody. Like burning coals the tune scorched his lips and set his body aflame. One foot began to move, to free itself from its chains of frost. The ice crackled; one foot began to dance. The other foot tore itself away from the clinging ice. The snow became red as skin from the sole of Moshe's foot remained grafted to the ice. Bones, muscles, and sinews began to step in the snow, to dance to the rabbi's niggun. Moshe's heart warmed up, burning tears streamed down his face as his body and soul sang the Bobov melody.

The Zeilappell was over. The Mauthausen camp square was strewn with scores of bodies. But Moshe's red footprints burned the white snow with the glow of a Bobov melody.

In his Monsey, New York, home Rabbi Moshe and his wife, six children, and grandchildren sing the rabbi's niggun every Friday night at the Sabbath table. Amidst the warmth of his family, the glow of the Sabbath candles, and the guiding gaze of the Bobover Rabbi's portrait, tears glitter in Rabbi Moshe's eyes. His bones and sinews are covered anew with flesh. The trail from Mauthausen to Monsey was blazed by burning faith.

extrait du livre "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust" de Yaffa Eliach
Edition originale (épuisée) : Oxford University Press, New-York, 1982
Réédition : Vintage Books, New-York, 1988
(pages 184-187)

(1) Song and dance enjoy a unique place in the Hasidic movement. A Hasidic master once said, "If I could sing, I would force G-d to dwell among men." (retour)

Sieg Maandag, jeune Juif hollandais survivant,
marchant sur un chemin bordé de cadavres, à Bergen-Belsen, vers le 20 avril 1945.

"La route est large. Le petit garçon est en culotte courte et semblerait un gamin ordinaire
s'il n'y avait ces dizaines de cadavres sur le côté : des jambes nues, d'autres vêtues. On ne distingue pas les visages."

Source : http://perso.orange.fr/d-d.natanson/enfants_deportes.htm