When the Nazi sneered that the only way he’d ever see Jerusalem was through the concentration camp chimneys, Binyamin Werzberger knew that one day, against all odds, he would stand next to those holy stones of the Kosel.

I

f you see an elderly man in a dapper suit looking like the host of the Kosel next time you visit, go up to him and shake his hand. He isn’t looking for money or even kavod; he’s the self-appointed service person of the Western Wall, there to help out any worshipper who needs assistance. Because for Binyamin Werzberger, 89, it’s about a vow he made to his Nazi oppressor more than 70 years ago.

Werzberger was already retired when he walked over to the offices of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the Jerusalem organization responsible for the maintenance of the Kosel area, offering his services. They were a bit skeptical of this retiree, but in the end offered him what was available — to clean the stones of the Kosel plaza every day, sweeping away the fallen notes (they are put in a special genizah) and make sure the area would look neat and presentable for the thousands of worshippers that arrive each day. He readily agreed, and for the past 20 years was on the site every morning at 5:30 a.m. (“I never look at my watch when I’m here,” he says.)

He couldn’t have been happier, knowing he’d vanquished the memory of that tormentor who sneered as his jackboot came down on young Binyamin’s head: “Still dreaming of Jerusalem, filthy Jew? Maybe your ashes will merit to see your precious Jerusalem through the smoke of your burning corpse!”

Now a combination of advanced age and a leg injury have ended that tenure, but although he’s no longer salaried, he still makes it his business to visit the Kosel once a week to welcome both the steadies and first-time visitors who come to the site.

Werzberger knows every corner and crevice and is intimately familiar with the ancient underground labyrinth revealed by the Kosel Tunnel excavations, but while those primeval stones have endured through the centuries, the area today is nothing like it was the first time he approached the holy site in 1947 after years of imprisonment and near death — and in defiance of the Nazi’s curse.

“War was right around the corner, but despite everything I’d gone through in Europe, I knew I had to get to the Kosel no matter what. What today is the Kosel plaza was the Mughrabi neighborhood at that time, and the entrance was through a very narrow path. I went through the Arab souk, and approached the Wall, which was guarded by both a British and an Arab soldier. Jews weren’t allowed to put even the smallest scrap into the cracks, but that didn’t bother me. I needed to uphold my personal oath against that accursed Nazi who’d trampled me,” Werzberger remembers. “When I reached the wall and let the tears flow, I felt whole for the first time in years. True, I was alone — no parents, no children, no friends. But I knew that I’d reached the Kosel against all odds. I was sure things would only improve from there.”

Beyond the Death March

Binyamin Werzberger was born in 1926 in a small Hungarian village on the Slovakian border. Like many of his friends, he attended the local Hungarian public school during school hours, and then a cheder during the afternoon. He spent two and a half years learning in yeshivah, before becoming an apprentice to a local tailor. When the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944, the onslaught was swift and deadly. In a matter of weeks, over 400,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz and other camps. Binyamin’s mother was killed immediately, yet he and his father had a short reprieve; they were sent to a labor camp and were forced to pave roads and build an airport for the German army.

But, says Werzberger, something amazing happened there: Estranged Jews began reconnecting with their Yiddishkeit. They hid siddurim, tefillin, and managed to daven. There was even a makeshift minyan during the Yamim Noraim.

Before Succos the inmates were transferred to a labor camp near Budapest. Four weeks later they were transferred again. A few months after, as the Russians and Americans were about to push Germany to surrender, the surviving group from the most recent death march arrived at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Upper Austria, which was notorious for being the most deadly of all labor camps. They reached Mauthausen at the end of March, where they were greeted by an orchestra and given a bit of food. But the reprieve didn’t last.

“One morning the Germans told us to be ready to march in fifteen minutes,” Werzberger remembers. “Later we heard that the Allied forced were approaching, and the Germans insisted on taking their prisoners with them as they retreated. At that time I weighed 26 kilo (57 lbs). My father, who up until now survived together with me, was very weak. We were ready to leave the camp when he collapsed. I ran to look for a doctor, but of course there was no doctor to be found. My father was lying there dying, and there was nothing I could do except sit next to him and cry.”

It was a sight that could break anyone’s heart — except the camp commandant’s. “Suddenly the commandant appeared. He was a big, brawny man, a monster. As I sat there crying, he slammed a truncheon into my head, and as I lay there reeling, I felt his jackboot on my skull as he screamed, ‘You accursed Jews, are you still dreaming of Jerusalem? None of you will ever get there. Here is where you’ll go up in smoke!’

“Somehow I managed to get up and run. At that point, weak as I was, I knew no Nazi murderer would stop me as long as G-d granted me another drop of strength. And deep inside, something propelled me — I knew I would get to Jerusalem. But my father remained on the ground. He didn’t survive.”

From Mauthausen, the Jews were marched on foot to the Gunskirchen camp. “We got there looking like skeletons, just skin and bones. This camp was located in a forest, and outside the blocs where we were placed were piles of bodies — countless corpses, people who hadn’t survived.

Just before liberation, Werzberger contracted typhus., but the American forces came in time and managed to nurse him back to life. On May 5, 1945, he was a free man. “When our American liberators came, they told us we had 24 hours to take our revenge on the Nazis who’d wiped out our families. I couldn’t move — I was way too sick — but I watched other prisoners kill a few Nazis.

Imprisoned Again

After he recovered, Werzberger, together with a group of other survivors, made his way back to Hungary, realizing he was probably the sole survivor of his family. In Budapest, he joined a Bnei Akiva garin that was training for settlement in Eretz Yisrael, and the group moved to Italy where there was a chance at getting passage to the Holy Land. On Motzaei Yom Kippur 1945, the Albertina set sail with 200 passengers, but Eretz Yisrael was still a dream away — en route, the ship sprung a leak and started to fill up with water. The boat docked on a small refueling island that flew the Turkish flag, and the local soldiers were duly bribed with enough liquor to ignore the group’s presence until they could join a larger ship. With Eretz Yisrael finally in sight, the British navy escorted the boat to the Haifa port and sent the refugees off to a detention camp in Cyprus.

In Cyprus the passengers lived in huts with paper-thin walls that did little to protect against the elements. “The British took everything from us,” Werzberger remembers. “We were left with just the shirts on our backs. Though you have to credit the British — they were certainly orderly. For every item they took away from us, they gave us a receipt. For two months we were entirely cut off from the world, but one day, a man wearing a suit arrived. ‘Chevrah,’ he told us, ‘whoever has family in Israel can write them a letter and I’ll make sure it gets to them.’ I had some relatives in Israel, so I wrote to them a letter telling them that the food reminded us of Yom Kippur, our clothing looked like  Purim costumes, and we lived in huts, just like on Succos.”

A few months later, Werzberger was transferred to the Atlit refugee camp, where he stayed for three weeks, working during the day paving roads. Then he was transferred to a different camp near Haifa, where the inmates were under the supervision of Jewish policemen, not British officers. “I remember thinking, I’ve been imprisoned for so long now. First, the guards were Hungarian. Then it was Nazis. A year later I was imprisoned by the British. Now I was being guarded by Jews… so I must be getting closer to the end of this nightmare.”

A month after that, Werzberger was finally freed. For the first time in years, no one was pursuing him. “I didn’t have a single penny in my pocket, but I decided to travel to Jerusalem and go to the Kosel. I promised myself that I would fulfill my promise as soon as I could. Only after I’d finally touched the stones of the Western Wall did I start to consider what to do with my life.”

Jerusalem Dreaming

Werzberger joined a Bnei Akiva garin — a core group of settlers — and worked in orchards near Petach Tikvah. He trained with the Haganah and fought in the War of Independence. He served in another three wars as well — the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

In 1950 Werzberger married and moved to Afula, where he worked as a plumber, later training in air-conditioning installation and elevator maintenance. There he opened a little shul, and along with his wife and partner, provided food and lodgings for the local paupers. But over the years, as much as he helped out the people around him, he too struggled with employment, and when the future in Afula looked bleak, he decided that the time had to realize his true dream — to move to Jerusalem, where two of his children lived, and perhaps even serve the Jewish people from the place dearest to him, the Kosel.

But life in the secular Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood where he and his wife settled wasn’t simple. “There were no religious people back then. That first Succos, I built a succah, but two days later it was destroyed. At first I wondered, for this I came to Jerusalem? This was the dream? But I decided to forge onward, and not to give up. With time, things changed. I managed to effect a positive change in the small surrounding community, and baruch Hashem, within a few years we had minyanim here, even shiurim.” Today, at age 89, Werzberger is still giving his shiur on Ohr Hachaim, in the shul where he serves as gabbai.

He’d had a positive influence on the neighborhood, but the Kosel still beckoned. So one morning he showed up at the Western Wall Heritage Foundation and brazenly asked for a job. “They looked me up and down and very politely told me that it wouldn’t work out, that I was too old. But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I told them my story, the promise that I’d made in the camps, that one day I would come to the Kosel. They told me that the only job available was a cleaning job, but anyway I was too old. ‘Give me a chance,’ I said. ‘What do you have to lose?’ ”

Werzberger was hired on a trial basis, but it wasn’t long before everyone came to appreciate him. In fact, he’s become somewhat of a legend around Jerusalem. Even visitors from overseas wanted to meet him, hear his life story, and pick up some of that love and inspiration. After 20 years with a broom in hand, the Foundation decided to give him a promotion — he would serve as a “host,” welcoming visitors to the site. “I didn’t really care what job they gave me,” he says. “The main thing is to be near the Kosel. You know, when the vice president of the US came here, I told him that the Jewish people are not ingrates. We remember Titus who destroyed the Beis Hamikdash, but we also remember the nations that helped save us from our oppressors. He was very moved.”

These days it’s harder for Werzberger to work, but he still makes sure to visit the Kosel at least once a week. “Every Tuesday I’m there. I sit for a few hours and greet the people who come to visit.” Werzberger is still in charge of his shul in Kiryat Hayovel, but in the last year hospital visits have taken up most of his energy due to his wife’s illness.

“She a real heroine,” he says. “She’s also a survivor. She worked in a munitions factory near Auschwitz. Throughout all eight days of Pesach, she refrained from eating chometz. You know what that means, to skip the bread in a labor camp?”

Werzberger says he feels as if he’s personally lived the prophecy of the awakening of the dry bones. “When I was on the brink of death, I managed to get up on my own two feet and reach Eretz Yisrael. After everything we’ve endured here, we managed to build a family, to raise children who keep Torah and mitzvos. Today I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren who keep Torah and mitzvos. That’s my response to those enemies who tried to obliterate us. That’s my reward for all my toil. And what could be more uplifting than the fact that I can stand here at the Kosel, touch the ancient stones and pray?

“Well, there’s one thing we’re still waiting for — the day when we’ll go past the Kosel into the Beis Hamikdash.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 569)