“I have kvestions for the Ribbono shel Olam, but right now, I don’t need the answers”

AS I was reviewing the Haggadah recently, I stopped at Ha Lachma Anya. The words opened a floodgate of memories of a mainstay of my youth, Mrs. Spiegel a”h — my friend’s grandmother and our family seamstress.

Mrs. Spiegel was a powerhouse of inspiration. She survived Auschwitz, broken and alone, but she forged on to build anew. The Nazis had robbed her of her family, her shtetl, her world — but not her emunah. Sadly, liberation was not the end of her troubles; the memories haunted Mrs. Spiegel for the rest of her life.

One particular memory tormented her. Suffocating in the mangled masses on the train to Auschwitz, she traveled with her older sister and her little niece, Esterke, who was about five or six. For days, neither a morsel of food nor water passed their parched lips.

“A bissel vasser,” her niece begged, over and over, her voice growing weaker each time. “Vasser, vasser.”

Esterke’s cries mingled with the moans of people taking their last breaths.

At some point, the train came to a halt, and someone hauled in a few buckets of water. Mrs. Spiegel’s sister managed to grab a pail with a few drops left. As she lifted the bucket to give little Esterke a drink, a baby began to cry. Esterke looked up at her mother.

“Ich bin nisht durshtig, Mamme, loz di bubbele trinken [I’m not thirsty, Mamme, let the baby drink].”

Mrs. Spiegel shared this story often. “How could the life of such a sweet tzadeikes be snuffed out? How could such a precious angel be made to suffer?”

She did not expect me to have an answer – and she didn’t need one.

“I have kvestions for the Ribbono shel Olam, but right now, I don’t need the answers,” she’d say. “Ven I get to the next world, den I vill ask Him.”