Seder Night in Bergen Belsen
I have been thinking a lot about tomorrow’s seder. It feels challenging to have a seder and celebrate our freedom when so many members of our nation are held captive by Hamas. And worse than merely being held captive, they are wounded, starved and sexually assaulted, if they are not dead. I thought that sedarim during COVID were challenging; I never imagined a situation like this one. I expressed this sentiment on my Facebook, and my friend and former roommate Tzila pointed out that during the Holocaust, the Jews held sedarim.
This reminded me of a particularly moving story found in ‘Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust’ by Yaffa Eliach. I have typed it up below, and have bolded the parts I find most affecting.
SEDER NIGHT IN BERGEN BELSEN: “TONIGHT WE HAVE ONLY MATZAH”
A few weeks before Passover, about seventy Jews in the section for foreign nationals in Bergen Belsen organized into a group. Most of them were Hasidic Jews who had arrived at the camp from the Bochnia ghetto. The majority of the people from the Bochnia transport were holders of South American passports; a few held Breitish papers from Eretz Yisrael. They organized the group in order to request flour for baking matzot in honor of the approaching Passover holiday. They addressed their written request to the camp commandant, suggesting that instead of their daily ration of bread they be given flour from which they would bake matzot. In this way they would not strain the camp food supplies. Each of the seventy people signed the petition, and the Rabbi of Bluzhov, Rabbi Israel Spira, an old-timer in Bergen Belsen, was selected as the group’s spokesman.
Adolf Haas, the camp commandant, read the petition carefully, then looked at the rabbi with open contempt and ridicule. “I will forward the request to Berlin,” he said, after a long silence, while nonchalantly toying with his revolver, “and we will act according to their instructions.”
Days passed and there was no reply from Berlin. With each passing day, the signers of the petition became more depressed. Some were convinced that they had made a grave mistake by signing the petition, for in doing so, they separated themselves from the rest of the inmates and probably signed their own death sentence, thus making their own “selection.” Knowing from their past experience that the Germans set apart the Jewish holidays as days of terror, torture and death, the seventy petition signers feared that they would probably be the Passover sacrifice, the Paschal lambs of Bergen Belsen.
Passover was only a few days away and the reply from Berlin had not yet arrived. At the hight of their despair, when all hope appeared lost and a bitter fate seemed to be inevitable, two tall S.S. men with two huge dogs briskly entered the section for foreign nationals. They summoned the Rabbi of Bluzhov to the camp commandant. In those dark days a summon by an S.S. officer clearly spelled one thing for a Jew: death. The rabbi parted from his friends aand began to recite the Vidduy, the prayer one recites before death, as he walked in the direction of the commandant’s office.
Camp cap in hand, the rabbi stood before the commandant and listened to what he had to say: “As always, Berlin is generous with the Jews. You can bake your religious bread.” The rabbi remained standing, waiting for the horrible decree to follow the commandant’s statement, but to the rabbi’s great amazement, none did.
Instead, the commandant called in a few inmates from another section in camp who were already waiting at the office entrance, and ordered them to help the rabbi build a small oven for baking matzot in the section for foreign nationals. The rabbi thanked the commandant and rushed back to the barracks in disbelief that they had indeed been granted permission to bake matzot.
The building of the oven began with feverish haste, the Hasidim fearing that the camp commandant would change his mind at any minute and stop them. In the few days before Passover, matzot were baked from the meager rationed flour, matzot that only in name resembled the pre-World War II matzot baked at home. But the people were thrilled with the shapeless black matzot, especially for the children’s sake, so they might see and learn that a holiday is observed even in the Valley of Death.
Passover arrived. A Seder was arranged in one of the barracks. Three-tiered wooden bunk beds served as tables and as traditional seats for reclining. Three precious unbroken matzot were place don the table. An old, dented, broken pot was used as the ceremonial Seder plate. On it there were no roasted shank bone, no egg, no haroset, no traditional greens, only a boiled potato given by a kind old German who worked at the showers.
But there was no shortage of bitter herbs; bitterness was in abundance. The suffering of the Jews was reflected in their eyes.
The Rabbi of Bluzhov sat at the head of the table. He wsa surrounded by a group of young children and a few adults. The rabbi began to recite the Haggadah from memory.
He uncovered the matzot, lifted the ceremonial plate, and began to tell the story of the Exodus.
This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungered- let them come and eat, all who are needy- let them come and celebrate Passover. Now we are here; next year may we be in the land of Israel! Now we are slaves; next year may we be free men!
The youngest of the children asked the Four Questions, his sweet childish voice chanting the traditional melody: '“Why is this night different from all other nights? For on all other nights we eat either bread or matzah, but tonight only matzah.”
It was dark in the barracks. The moon’s silvery, pale glow was reflected on the pale faces. It was as if the tears that silently streamed down their cheeks were flowing toward the legendary angel with the huge jugs of tears, which when filled to its brim would signal the end of human suffering.
As is customary, the rabbi began to explain the meaning of Passover in response to the Four Questions. But on that Seder night in Bergen Belsen, the ancient questions of the Haggadah assumed a unique meaning.
“Night,” said the rabbi, “means exile, darkness, suffering. Morning means light, hope, redemption. Why is this night different from all other nights? Why is this suffering, the Holocaust, different from all the previous sufferings of the Jewish people?” No one attempted to respond to the rabbi’s questions. Rabbi Israel Spira continued.
“For on all other nights we eta either bread or matzah, but tonight only matzah. Bread is leavened; it has height. Matzah is unleavened and is totally flat. During all our previous sufferings, during all our previous nights in exile, we Jews had bread and matzah. We had moments of bread, of creativity, and light, and moments of matzah, of suffering and despair. But tonight, the night of the Holocaust, we experience our greatest suffering. We have reached the depths of the abyss, the nadir of humiliation. Tonight we have only matzah, we have no moments of relief, not a moment of respite for our humiliated spirits…But do not despair, my young friends.”
The rabbi continued in a forceful voice filled with fait. “For this is also the beginning of our redemption. We are slaves who served Pharaoh in Egypt. Slaves in Hebrew are avadim; the Hebrew letters of the word avadim form an acronym for the Hebrew phrase: David, the son of Jesse, your servant, your Messiah. Thus, even in our state of slavery we find intimations of our eventual freedom through the coming of the Messiah.
“We who are witnessing the darkest night in history, the lowest moment of civilization, will also witness the great light of redemption, for before the great light there will be a long night, as was promised by our Prophets. ‘But it shall come to pass, that at evening time there shall be light,’ and ‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.’ It was to us, my dear children, that our prophets have spoken, to us who dwell in the shadow of death, to us who will live to witness the great light of redemption.
The Seder concluded. Somewhere above, the silvery glow of the moon was dimmed by dark clouds. The Rabbi of Bluzhov kissed each child on the forehead and reassured them that the darkest night of mankind would be followed by the brightest of all days.
As the children returned to their barracks, slaves of a modern Pharaoh amidst a desert of mankind, they were sure that the sounds of the Messiah’s footsteps were echoing in the sounds of their own steps on the blood-soaked earth of Bergen Belsen.
I heard it at the house of the Grand Rabbi of Bluzhov, Rabbi Israel Spira, June 22, 1975.
-pages 16-19
Tomorrow night we will hold the seder. Many families of the hostages have expressed their anger and despair. They have no interest in holding a seder because they do not feel like there is any freedom to speak of. And that is their right, because as we know, we do not comfort the mourner when his dead lies before him.
But we are different. We have an opportunity. There are people hidden underground, or chained up in rooms, who do not have the ability to make a seder tomorrow night. Yarden, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas are being robbed of the opportunity to hold their seder together as a family. But we can do it for them. We can do it in their merit. We can hold the seder with our family members and direct our thoughts and actions for them, so that the Torah we teach, and the ideas we share, will be dedicated to them. We can pray that they, and all the hostages, are released tomorrow night- this night of miracles, of faith, of God redeeming with an outstretched arm. As we hold our seder, we can express our wish that soon, they too will be able to hold their own seder, free once more.
And we can also bear in mind the miracle we saw in November, when so many people were released and families were reunited. As those families sit down to their seder tomorrow night, they will truly be able to tell the story of being freed from captivity. I am thinking of the Katz-Asher family in particular. Yoni offered to go to Gaza and offered himself in exchange for his wife and kids, an action that touched my heart. When he was reunited with Doron, Raz and Aviv, it was like the sun had come out. It was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. And while I don’t know whether they will hold a seder tomorrow night, the fact is that they can. This is a modern day miracle of a family who was separated, where the wife and children were taken captive, and then they were reunited again. Even in our time of doubt and despair, we should not forget the miracles.
I pray that soon every family will be like the Katz-Asher family- reunited once more, healthy and whole, and able to celebrate the holiday together, filled with joy. May it be so. The Redeemer of Israel has made Pesach a special night; in the merit of His might and power and for the sake of His great name, may He free and redeem the hostages this Pesach night.