This Yom Tov, when Eliyahu HaNavi visits every household, we share a collection of first-person encounters, tales of miraculous intervention by a mysterious figure

Project Coordinator: Rachel Bachrach

It’s a moment of desperation, and there’s no way out — when suddenly, as if Heaven-sent, someone appears.

You may never have met him before, and you may never see him again, but he provides salvation when you need it most.

Eliyahu HaNavi didn’t die. And in every generation, he comes to the rescue of his People in distress. This Yom Tov, when he visits every household, we share a collection of first-person encounters, tales of miraculous intervention by a mysterious figure

Peddling Redemption

As told to Riki Goldstein

by Mr. Zalman Hoff

S

eptember 1944. The noose was tightening around the necks of the remaining European Jewish communities. The Nitra yeshivah in Slovakia, the continent’s very last functioning yeshivah, had closed, and as the Gestapo combed the area like bloodhounds sniffing out their prey, the Jews of Nitra scrambled for hiding places.

My parents, Reb Yaakov and Perel Hoff, hid in a cramped underground bunker with their two small children. They accessed the bunker through a hole concealed at the back of a coat closet, and food was provided by a local caretaker in exchange for steady payment.

One Sunday, they heard the caretaker’s wife return from church. She was voluble and excited as she recounted the sermon for her husband.

“The priest said the Jews are suffering for their sins against Christians and the savior, and anyone who helps them will go to hell and suffer the same end!” she said, adding that her conscience had been niggling at her about the Jews they were hiding. “I’m going to the Gestapo,” she concluded.

My parents trembled in fear — and then came the husband’s reply, a violent scream of rage.

“If you say a word about those Jews, I’ll kill you!”

The danger of being turned in by the devoutly Catholic wife passed, and the caretaker continued to hide and feed my parents. But soon, their money ran out, and they decided to reach out to Dovernik Weiss, a wealthy local Jew who was hiding in a nearby bunker and giving Yidden money to save themselves.

Mama borrowed a large shawl from the caretaker’s wife and draped it over her head and shoulders. She adorned her arms with bracelets and rings, gypsy-style. Around midnight, when she thought the roads would be clear, she climbed through the coat closet and out of the house. She crept through the streets of Nitra until she reached Weiss’s bunker — but when she got there, she saw the place was swarming with SS men. They had just discovered the rich Jew’s hideout, and poor Weiss and his family were hostages on their way to Auschwitz.

Before Mama knew it, she was surrounded by soldiers, who grabbed hold of her.

“She’s also a Jew!” one of them proclaimed.

At the Gestapo headquarters, Mama was questioned.

“Are you really a Jew?” a senior officer asked her disdainfully.

“What else are you going to accuse me of?! I’m a plain peasant woman!” Mama, the daughter of a rav in Pressburg, did not want to directly deny her Yiddishkeit, and she summoned all her wits and acting prowess.

He wasn’t convinced. Noting her smooth hands, he shot back, “The peasants around here have to work and have rough skin. You’re a Jew!”

“I’m a peasant!”

“What is your name?”

“Yulushka!” she said, giving herself a typical peasant name.

“What were you doing there, out at night?”

“I came to meet a friend at the nearby sweets company.”

“Where do you live?”

“Twenty Turcianska Street.”

The officer called an underling and barked the order: “Take her to 20 Turcianska Street and see if she’s telling the truth.”

Forcibly dragged through the streets by the young Nazi, Mama prayed desperately. Once they discovered that she wasn’t who she had claimed to be, would they torture her for the whereabouts of her family and other Jews? She pulled the gold rings off her fingers and held them out to the Nazi, pleading to be let go, but his face was hard and set.

Suddenly, a peddler appeared across the street, pushing his cart laden with wares toward them. Mama’s captor continued to drag her.

The peddler came closer. Then he looked at Mama and called out “Hello, Yulushka! What are you doing here?”

“Do you know this woman?” the Nazi barked.

“Sure I know her! Yulushka lives on my street, at 20 Turcianska.”

The Nazi abruptly released Mama, spun on his heel, and marched off. Mama turned to thank the peddler for saving her.

He had vanished into thin air.

 Many more miracles kept my family alive. A policeman, moved by the plea of my four-year-old sister Esther — “Please, we want to live, don’t let us die!” — took us into his bunker. My family stayed there until Erev Pesach 1945, when the policeman heard his neighborhood had been targeted for Allied bombing.

On the second day of Pesach, the Russians liberated Nitra from the Nazis.

My parents helped rehabilitate the survivors who trickled back to the town. In 1948 they moved to Paris, then Manchester, to escape the Communist regime, rebuild their lives, and raise their children with Torah. The story of Mama’s encounter with Eliyahu Hanavi is passed down to all her descendants, repeated with wonder and thanks, especially on Leil HaSeder.

That short exchange preserved generations.

Mr. Zalman Hoff is a retired optometrist who teaches Torah in North West London.