My main reading for Tishah B’Av afternoon: Frieda Bassman’s memoir Miracles

Listening to my rav’s masterful explication of the Kinnos on Tishah B’Av, my dominant emotion was an overwhelming gratitude at being a member of a community that has endured so much and remained faithful.

That feeling was only reinforced by my main reading for Tishah B’Av afternoon: Frieda Bassman’s memoir Miracles (Feldheim). Only a Jew who has experienced the loss of “everything, everything” can fully understand what it is to mourn for Yerushalayim, of being “unable to ever rejoice with total abandon, or to wear gaudy jewelry or clothing in public,” she writes.

Not that Miracles is depressing. Its central character is the bravest, most optimistic, most energetic woman imaginable. “Indomitable” does not begin to do her justice. I cannot imagine readers who would not find Miracles one of the most inspiring books they have ever read, if not the most, and its heroine the most remarkable woman.

THE TWIN PILLARS of Frieda Bassman’s life were giving and doing. Her father used to tease her, “Friedush, you would be a nice-looking girl if you ever stood still long enough for anyone to see you.”

Her motto was “Arbet macht dos leben zees — Work makes life sweet,” and even at 80, she was still leaving for her nursing home at 5:30 a.m. most days.

The giving was a legacy from her mother. The book fittingly opens with the story of “Mameh’s potatoes.” In the fall of 1937, Mameh ascended to a farmer’s market up the mountain from their village of Yasina, nestled in the Carpathian Mountains. She hitched a ride home in a horse-drawn wooden cart, along with the five large sacks of potatoes purchased for the winter. At some point, the horses were spooked and began rushing headlong down the mountain. The soldiers holding the reins were both thrown from the cart and killed.

When the horses finally tired and came to a halt, Mameh was found tucked between the sacks of potatoes, shaken but unscathed. Mameh attributed her survival to the fact that the potatoes were meant to feed the poor of Yasina — Frieda could never recall a meal that the family ate alone — and Hashem spared her to complete the mitzvah.

Echoing her mother, Mrs. Bassman would often say: “The more people you make happy, the happier the Eibeshter will be with you.”

Another of Mameh’s rules was that no one should ever leave her house unhappy — a rule that resulted in her stepson Urtze’s unanticipated engagement and subsequent happy marriage. His “mistake”: trying to push off a match into which he was being pressured by saying he would require his stepmother’s approval. Little did he suspect that his Mameh would conclude matters and break a plate with the pressuring father-in-law while Urtze was davening Maariv.

In Auschwitz, Frieda had a certain measure of freedom of movement due to her fair complexion and to somehow not being tattooed upon arrival. She used to scale a fence to bring water to suffering fellow prisoners. After the war, she met several fellow survivors, who attributed their lives to her.

As a girl, she wanted to be a doctor — a course blocked to her — and subsequently a nurse. That desire to heal, to bring back the spark of life to those who had despaired, was later fulfilled managing her nursing home. The story of a 32-year-old delivered to her care who remained in bed all day, nearly catatonic, opening his eyes only to drink orange juice twice a day, stands for many others.

In time, he confided his story: He had been in a car accident in which his wife and three young children were killed, and he saw no reason to go on living. He also mentioned that he had been a painter.

One day, Mrs. Bassman asked him if he could paint a rundown bathroom on the premises. That request brought him back to life, and subsequently she persuaded another painter to hire him. In time, he married again and had children, and eventually became one of the largest painting contractors in Chicago.

Mrs. Bassman once took in a family of four, who had been evicted for non-payment of rent, for nearly a year. And her daughters recall at least three women, two of them non-Jewish, who lived with the family for close to a decade, largely because they were too mentally unstable to fit into the nursing home.

HER FEARLESSNESS and deep emunah were the keys to everything. Another of Mameh’s favorite sayings was “Gelt farloren, nit farloren; mut farloren, alles farloren — If money is lost, nothing is lost; if courage is lost, everything is lost.”

At one point, her father was taken to the local headquarters of the Hungarian secret police, known as the Devil’s House because so few emerged alive. Frieda impetuously marched into the building and rushed to the room where her father was being beaten to offer herself in his stead. The officer beating her father with a truncheon was nearly frothing at the mouth in fury at the unexpected appearance of the “little Jewish swine” telling him whom to beat, and ordered both father and daughter out of his sight.

Twice she was sent to win release from prison of brothers who had deserted their Hungarian army work brigades. As she prepared to return home from one of those trips to Budapest, she noticed two glazed glass lantern tops in a kosher restaurant. Such lumpen gleizlach were then unavailable in Yasina, and without them, the lanterns universally used to illuminate local homes did not work.

She convinced the restaurant owner to ship 500 such tops stored in cartons, valued at 800 penge, COD to Yasina, based on a 5 penge downpayment. Once back in Yasina, she borrowed the 800 penge from Mr. Davidovich, a wealthy local Jew, promising repayment from the proceeds. Those proceeds kept the larder filled all winter with in-kind payments from local farmers, and provided for the family’s final sumptuous Sedorim, with many guests.

Late on Erev Chag, Frieda flew to Mr. Davidovich’s house to repay the loan. It was a good thing she did not delay, for by the early morning of Isru Chag, all the Jews of Yasina were awaiting transport to the Mateszalka ghetto, the last stop before Auschwitz.

TWO STORIES remained deeply engraved in my memory from my first reading of Miracles years back. (They are only the tip of the iceberg.) Within hours of arriving at a HIAS hostel in Manhattan at 2 a.m., May 1947, Frieda she set out for Brooklyn to procure a student affidavit for her brother Shloime Volf. She had 50 cents in her pocket, knew not a word of English, and had never seen a subway — in Yasina, even cars were a novelty. All she had was the address of the Bais Yaakov that had provided affidavits for her and her sister Henchie.

Yet somehow, after wasting many precious nickels, she managed to find the Bais Yaakov, where the secretary explained that Bais Yaakov could not send an affidavit for male students and directed her to Yeshivas Chaim Berlin. And from Chaim Berlin, she still had to find a certain Rabbi Weinberg in East Flatbush. Mission accomplished, she found herself penniless and starving from not having eaten in nearly 24 hours.

Spotting a door with a mezuzah, she rang the doorbell. When the kindly woman who answered the door asked her, “Where is your home, mein kind?” her body rocked with giant, heaving sobs before she could get out the words, “Ich... ich hob nisht kein heim — I have no home.” Fortunately, she had come to the home of Rabbi Zaltzman, a fundraiser for Chaim Berlin, who took in both Frieda and Henchie, until their respective weddings.

The second story took place on Yom Kippur in the early ’50s. Mrs. Bassman was running a boarding house, many of whose residents were bedridden and in need of medical attention. The cook had been given the day off, and neither of the other two workers showed up. Besides fasting, Mrs. Bassman was then late in her third pregnancy, with a two-year-old toddler clinging to her leg, and an infant slung over her hip, as she raced up and down the three flights of stairs, responding to the various shouted demands from the 18 patients. In the middle of that bedlam, an older, demented patient escaped, forcing Mrs. Bassman to give chase.

“I couldn’t daven even one word from a siddur that day, but my heartfelt tefillos mingled with my tears to become the most memorable Yom Kippur of my entire life,” she concludes her description of that day.

OF THE 12,000 JEWS who arrived in Auschwitz the same day as Frieda Bassman, less than 100 survived. She endured a 250-mile death march to Bergen-Belsen that bore “not the slightest parallel to ordinary suffering.” After liberation, it took her six months of rehabilitation to be able to walk again.

Yet despite her having no formal Jewish education, the emunah of her parents was firmly engrained in her and all their descendants. One of her most poignant memories was of her seven-year-old nephew, Mordechai, who had not eaten in days, refusing a piece of salami she offered him because she could not assure him it was kosher.

Frieda attested to the fact that she felt Hashem’s presence constantly in the camps. She firmly believed that she had been saved for a purpose, and rejoiced that even in her old age, the Eibeshter gave her so many opportunities to help others. She did not even mention in memoir her tireless recruiting of students for the fledgling Bais Yaakov in Chicago; or her impulsive funding of the medical warehouse of Ezrah L’Marpeh in Israel; or her visit to offer encouragement to Israeli soldiers wounded in the Six Day War; or her monthly flights to Eretz Yisrael, beginning in the ’70s.

Last week at a chasunah, I ran into an old-time Chicagoan. When I told him how powerful Miracles was, he waved his hand dismissively, adding, “No book could possibly do her justice.” No doubt true, but I am still filled with pride to be part of the same People as Frieda Bassman.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1026. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)