A series of miracles and unbending emunah brings a teenage boy to defy the Nazis and discover his own inner core of G-dliness

PHOTO: DAVID CHESNER

All he wanted was to survive, yet Yeedle Baum was a hunted animal at the hands of the Nazis. One miracle after another, somehow the war was over. When he raised the blue and white flag over Haifa harbor, he knew he had to be worthy of G-d’s grace

Tomashov-Masovietzki, 1932

“Yeedle, please eat a spoon of farina,” his mother coaxes the reluctant child. “Remember, Tatte said he’ll give you a prize if you finish your plate.” Yeedle, a frail, scrawny seven-year-old, knows very well the power he wields by agreeing to swallow a portion of food.

“If I eat, will you let me ride in my carriage?” His mother hides a smile. “Certainly, I’ll instruct Jan to take you on a long, long ride, all the way past the mill.” She knows how her youngest son loves to ride in his child-size pony carriage, following the track that leads through the town and then along to the river, all the way past the family’s flour mill. Yeedle leans forward, his mouth open wide, and his mother sighs in relief.

1939

Yeedle has grown. He’s already 14, and of age to go away to yeshivah. But his older sisters are still fretting and fussing over him — how will he manage so far from home all on his own? What kind of food will they feed him there? What kind of mattress will he sleep on? Will there be enough heat through the cold winter nights? Yeedle protests. After all, he tells them, he’s not a baby anymore. Yet in his heart, he’s not so sure — will he really manage without the comforts he’s accustomed to? But before he can prove himself, everything changes. Germany declares war and Poland is overrun by the Nazis before the Yamim Tovim are out.

Yeedle walks quickly through the streets of Tomashov. He is out on an errand but knows that Mama worries every moment he is gone. And Yeedle worries as well, for there is danger in the mostly-deserted streets since the Germans have come, and he prefers to be behind the locked door and shuttered windows of his childhood home where he can still pretend he’s safe. All of a sudden, the silence is broken by the roar of an engine that powers a truck full of jeering soldiers that is almost upon him before he can duck away. The truck brakes, and the soldiers order him on. Before Yeedle knows what’s happening, they drive off with him, through the streets and out of the town, and he wonders if he’ll ever see his family again. They are so jolly, these soldiers of the Reich, laughing at their own jokes as they poke fun at Yeedle’s peyos and chassidic garb.

“Hey Jew!” Yeedle looks up. “If you shout out that the Jews are to blame for the war, we will set you free.” A round of cheers and applause. What an amusing proposal! The soldier who has spoken beams at his own cleverness. “What do you say? Do you want to be freed, huh?”

Of course he wants to be free. Yeedle longs to be released from this nightmare and run like the wind back to his family, but… he refuses to indict his fellow Jews. Not for anything in the world will he malign his people — not even his life.

“I am to blame for the war!” he yells over the noise of the engine. “I am to blame for the war!” he screams out to the air, to the swooping birds, to the black clouds gathered overhead.

The soldiers howl with laughter, the loose loud laugh of men who have tasted victory — it’s a good joke, after all. And they stop the truck and let him go.