“Every year on the
anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, we
commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. We recall the suffering of
millions of innocent people, and highlight the perils of anti-Semitism and
hatred of any kind.”
On
January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Gary and I headed to
Charlottesville to see a traveling exhibit housed in the Brody Jewish Student
Center, at the University of Virginia entitled, “The Survivors’ Talmud.”
The
exhibit consists of a 20 minute video presentation, dense with information on
an aspect of the Holocaust neither of us had ever heard or read about. This
remarkable story only starts when the war ends. The U.S. Army had been charged with
creating a sense of “normalcy” for those Jews who were stuck in “limbo,” awaiting
visa’s for entry into the US or Palestine. However, after President Truman’s
personal emissary, Earl G. Harrison, reported on the conditions in the DP camps,
it became apparent that the directive was being ignored by Army leadership,
thus provoking a strong letter to General Eisenhower from President Truman. An
original carbon copy of that letter is also in the case. The entire text of
President Truman’s very moving letter to General Eisenhower setting forth his
concerns about Jewish life in occupied Europe can be read here.
For
Jews, “normalcy” meant study, and without Jewish texts there could be no study!
Since the Talmud is the heart of Jewish discourse, it was determined that new
copies of the Talmud should be printed and distributed to DP camps and other
places where Jews had been resettled.
An
extensive search was made throughout the Allied Sector of occupied Europe for a
complete set of the Talmud, but none could be found. It seems that along with
the meticulous burning of synagogues, houses of learning, and six million Jews,
every copy of the Talmud (made up of multiple volumes) had also gone up in
flames. During the Holocaust, Nazis sympathizers burned thousands upon
thousands of Jewish books and holy texts in mass book burnings. In fact the
English word, Holocaust, was first applied to describe a grand scale public
book burning in Germany in1933, when Germans began the task of ridding
themselves of that most dangerous of weapons, the printed word.
With
no prototype to be found in the Allied Zone, two complete copies of the Talmud
were located in New York, (remember America was NOT a hotbed of Talmudic
scholarship in 1946) and shipped to Germany to be printed – on a press that had
just recently been printing Nazi propaganda!
There were shortages of everything after the war, and that included
massive amounts of paper, and ink, which were requisitioned through the Army.
And
so, at the behest of and with the blessings of President Truman, these copies
of the Talmud were printed and distributed. The original plan was for 500
editions, of which 50 were actually produced by the U.S. Army. It is one of
these complete sets that is housed in the display case at UVA. The title page of each volume depicts a Nazi
slave labor camp surrounded by barbed wire. Above it are palm trees and scenes
of Israel. These images are connected by the Hebrew words: "From bondage
to freedom, from darkness to a great light."
There
is a very sweet moment in the video as we see photos and listen to the narrator
talk about the boredom in the camps. First he shows listless men sitting around
doing nothing, hopeless about the future.
Then you see a few men reading the Talmud. Subsequent pictures show whole rooms of men
studying Talmud, in tandem (chevrutah) across from each other. “If the papa’s
happy, the mama’s happy.” We see smiling women in a workshop learning to trim
hats. “If the mama’s happy, the children
are happy.” We see children eagerly engrossed in their studies and at play.
Once hope was restored, happiness could be restored, as well as trust and love.
Here
are the words, from our not that distant past, that are inscribed in the first
volume of each of the Survivors’ Talmud. The dedication appears in English:
“In 1946 we turned to the American Army Commander
to assist us in the publication of the Talmud. In all the years of exile it has
often happened that various governments and forces have burned Jewish books.
Never did any publish them for us. This is the first time in Jewish history
that a government has helped in the publication of the Talmud, which is the
source of our being and the length of our days. The Army of the United States
saved us from death, protects us in this land, and through their aid does the
Talmud appear again in Germany.”
Shabbat
Shalom,
Rabbi
Rose
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