Crammed in a dirty filthy barracks with 800 other starving women in the record cold winter of 1944, Penny Bowman felt compelled to risk death at the hands of her Nazi guards to make toys that symbolize life.It was Chanukah, the normally joyous eight day Jewish Festival of Lights, and Bowman,73, had just been transfered from Auschwichz death camp in Poland to a slave labor camp in Germany. There Bowman worked from dawn to dusk soldering wires on walkie-talkies, radios and telephones.
Whenever the guards were not looking, Bowman shaped the molten lead into dreidles. For centuries, Jewish children have played with these spimming tops as part of the chanukah celebrations.
Chankah means dedication. The holiday celebrates the rededication of the second temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC. This was done after the Jews overthrew the Greco-Syrian forces that occupied ancient Israel at the time.
Over the next 235 years, the story was told about how, after retaking the Temple, The Maccabees had only enough oile to fuel their nine-branched menorah for one day. It was supposed to remain lighted at all times. Miraculously, the story goes, it burned for eight days, until more oil was available.
Today, the holiday focuses on telling the story of the Maccabees and remembering the event, which canonized the Talmud ( the authoritive book of Jewish rules and Traditions) in 500 AD. During the festival, which begins with a feast, songs are sung and children play with dreidles. The for sided tops have Hebrew lettering.
Bowman who now lives in Atlanta, remembered making dreidles as a child in Hungary. She felt compelled even as a prisoner to try to observe the holiday.
"The signifance of Chanukah is life, survival & freedom." she says. "You don't feel the significance until you lose it". And that's what we we were thinking about in the camps. We could not observe our religion. It would mean death. But though Chanukah is not realy a very important Jewish Holiday, it took special meaning and gave us hope.
The holiday is a joyous one. It asserts the right of Jews to be different as they live as a minorty in a culture dominated by another religion, and that we should be open and assertive instating who we are.
Bowman fasted - according to Jewish tradition - on the more solmn holyday of Yom Kippur, even when living on a piece of bread in Auschwitz.
Now she celebrates Chanukah as millions of North American Jews do: by exchanging gifts and decorating her home. She admits that this bothers her because it is simular to Christmas. However Bowman, surrounde by her husband, Harold, 75, their three grown children and three grandchildren, will light the candles at sundown Thursday, Dec.21,2000 - 25th of Kislev 5761 when Chanukah begins this year.
Source: Cox Newspapers
12/20/00 9:15:14 AM