The Search for a Spouse

For some women it took months, and for some it took years. But when a Holocaust survivor made the decision to pursue marriage, what did they look for in a spouse? Were their postwar criteria different from what would have been before these years of suffering? And how did they go about meeting prospective partners without parents to guide them?

Mrs. Laufer remembers that the engagement process was quick, with little or no “dating.”

“There was no ‘let’s go out and get to know each other,’ she asserts in her matter-of-fact style. “If a man was recommended by a friend and he seemed like a good person, you got married. We had no parents to check out potential spouses; we relied on seichel and mazel. In my case, though I didn’t have a father or mother to give a haskamah, an older cousin highly recommended my husband, and I trusted his judgment.”

Indeed, without parents or family members to approve of the match, some survivors found comfort in the fact that their parents had known their future spouses or their spouse’s family; Mrs. Berta Frank was one of them.

Before being deported to Auschwitz, Mrs. Frank had worked as a receptionist in the laundry center of the Lodz ghetto. After the war, while walking through Berlin’s subways, she met her former “boss,” a Gerrer chassid who had been appointed to oversee laundry operations in the ghetto. They renewed their relationship and after several meetings, he proposed marriage.

“I agreed,” says Mrs. Frank. “My parents had known him from Lodz, and he knew my parents. I knew that they would have been happy with my choice.”

Other survivors were forced to project whom their parents would have wanted them to marry. Mrs. Rachel Novogrodsky, a survivor whose written testimony is featured in the Yad Vashem archives, describes how she made the decision to marry her husband.

“I wanted to get married. It was important to me that he be religious, that he would know [how] to study, that he would be easy to talk with — he was the only [one] that fit. Not a simple decision [to make] right after the war. I remember sitting alone in the woods, under the trees, writing his name in the sand, and thinking about my father. I knew that if Father were to see him — especially studying Gemara — he would be pleased. I knew that Yishayahu would fit my family.”

For young Rachel, feeling the warmth of her father’s approval was essential. At the same time, however, her criteria were few: “Be religious, easy-to-talk-to, and know [how] to study.” Purely external factors were reduced to the ranks of irrelevance as she made this momentous decision.

In a similar vein, Mrs. Chana Stollman contrasts the postwar shidduch process with that of today’s, emphasizing the Holocaust’s unsolicited role as the “Great Equalizer.”

“There wasn’t much information to look into. We were all the same ‘poor,’ we were all the same status. You looked for someone with similar values — as close as possible —and that was the only thing that mattered.”

With regard to altered criteria, Mrs. Stollman freely admits that her shidduch probably would not have happened in prewar days. “I doubt that I, a quiet girl from a small town in Hungary, would have married a city-bred boy from Warsaw from a distinguished, rebbishe family. But after the camps, family background and yichus didn’t matter as much; we made it work.”

Rabbi Samuel Leiter, a Holocaust survivor who married in New York in 1954, notes that practicality was often an important factor when considering a match.

“Sometimes, if a survivor in the DP camps married someone who had already procured immigration papers, chances were that they, too, would be able to emigrate sooner. It was a definite plus to have papers.”

But not all survivors focused solely on practical considerations.

“I looked for a man who would be kind, gentle, tolerant, with a good sense of humor, and of course, with the same religious beliefs as I had,” says Mrs. Rose Stark, who married several years after the war’s end, in 1950. “When a friend asked me if he would have to be rich, I said ‘not necessarily.’ And to be sure, G-d made no mistake — for rich he wasn’t! But we were the happiest people in the world.”

Mrs. Stark’s daughter, Mrs. Miriam Zakon, grew up with many other children of survivors. She believes that the overwhelming success of these impromptu unions stemmed from the fact that survivors shared a common objective.

“The Holocaust survivors that I know,” says Miriam, “married with one goal: to establish nice Jewish families — good, decent children who would be a source of nachas to their parents’ memory and to their Creator. Because this was their primary focus, they didn’t get hung up on externalities.”

A Caveat

Despite the valuable lessons to be learned from these less-than-typical marriages, it would be overly simplistic to claim that they all turned out rosy.

“We used to joke,” says Mrs. Berta Frank, “that for many people, Hitler, yemach shemo, was the shadchan! Some of my good friends married men who really were not suited for them, or who were considerably older. Once married, they tried their best to make it work, but it certainly wasn’t a smooth ride.”

Mrs. Rose Stark relates a poignant incident that occurred just before she decided to marry her second husband.

“After only three weeks of getting to know me, my future husband proposed marriage. I was apprehensive; wasn’t this rushing things a bit? His rabbi had only praises for him, but he warned us that if we didn’t marry soon, we would have to wait until after the sefirah. I was so unsure. I wished my mother was alive — she would really know what I should do.”

“When I asked a colleague at work for his opinion, he advised me to go for it. After all, he said, in this country, the law is on the woman’s side; if it will not work out, just walk out. ‘Oh no, sir,’ I responded. ‘I am from the old country, where marriage was for better or worse. And I will not walk out just because the law is on my side.’$$separate quotes$$”

Weddings of Wonder

After much deliberation or none at all, and with or without family to approve, survivors would announce their engagements and then begin preparations for their weddings. What were these emotional celebrations like?

“I borrowed a gown and veil from a local German woman by giving her cigarettes,” recalls Mrs. Fran Laufer. “My future husband hired a shochet from Hamburg to prepare some meat, and my older cousins did the rest of the cooking. More than 300 girls from the makeshift Bergen-Belsen Bais Yaakov attended, and one of the girls lent me a pair of white gloves. Together, my friends chipped in to buy us a wedding present: a tiny silver spoon.”

“As we stood under the chuppah,” tells Mrs. Laufer, “Shimon asked me, ‘Should we go on and be religious? After all, look at what happened to us.’ I told Shimon that we had to be Torah-observant, religious Jews. I believed that my mother and father, had they lived, would have wished that we follow in the footsteps of our parents and grandparents.”

Mrs. Chana Stollman remembers her New York wedding as distinctly bittersweet.

“We were sad and happy at once. My sister and aunt walked me down to the chuppah; while I was grateful that I had family members to share in my joy, how I wished that my parents could be there with me.”

“I was twenty-four years old at the time,” recalls Mrs. Berta Frank, who married in Berlin in 1947. “I was a very tall girl, and I could not find a dress to borrow that actually fit. Finally, my gentile German neighbor offered to lend me her long brown dress, and I gratefully accepted. The shoes that I wore had been distributed by the Joint; they were navy blue, and on my head I wore a white veil. What can I say? It’s a good thing that the pictures were black and white!”

On a more solemn note, Mrs. Frank describes her intense emotions.

“I cried at my wedding because it was in the city where I was born and my parents weren’t there with me. I cried, but at the same time, I was happy that I found such a wonderful man, a talmid chacham of whom my parents would have been proud.”

Mrs. Peska Friedman’s wedding was a most assuredly homemade affair.

“I sewed my own gown and I cooked my own food. My cousin made wine and chopped some herring. To save money, we decided to do a double wedding: we booked a restaurant together with another couple and our wedding guests sat together for a shared seudah.”

“I was joyful to have found my basherte,” Mrs. Friedman continues. “But I can tell you that when my brother, the Munkatcher Rebbe, Rav Boruch Rabinowich, ztz”l, came to give me a brachah at my bedeken, I never cried in my life as much as I cried then. I poured out all of the longing and pain that was in my heart.”

Mrs. Rose Stark’s wedding in New York, a second marriage, was of a decidedly different nature.

“My wedding was a simple affair,” she relates. “I couldn’t imagine having a festive celebration; I was still in mourning for my family.”

“It was Motzaei Shabbos when we went to the home of the rabbi who would be mesader kiddushin. The wedding guests consisted of two of my aunts and my husband’s aunt and cousin; they were virtually our only living relatives. The rabbi performed the chuppah ceremony and then we went home.

“I vividly remember the bewilderment of my eight-year-old niece on seeing this strange, no-frills affair. ‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘I never saw a wedding with no food!’$$separate quotes$$”

Simple Beginnings, Beautiful Lives

Marriage is never a simple decision. But for these survivors, it came on the heels of years that were indescribably hellish. These marriages took place with barely any family support, and it had to occur when there were so many physical and emotional wounds that had yet to heal.

And yet, though their decisions to marry and their actual weddings were fraught with difficulties and pain, these women now look back at the magnificent outcome: beautiful families that follow in the ways of their parents and ancestors, glorious generations who adhere to the laws and traditions that they hold so dear.

“All my children turned out to be honest, good people, raising G-d-fearing families,” Mrs. Rose Stark says tearfully, with obvious pride. “G-d has paid me back.”

This sentiment — shared by so many of her generation— is a moving expression of their resolute faith and unfathomable inner strength.

These bittersweet brides walked to their chuppos without parents at their side; they married in simplicity. In doing so, they honored the legacy of the parents and the families they had lost; their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are our nation’s greatest consolation.

The Parachute Bride

What does a 1945 groom in Bergen-Belsen do when his bride’s greatest dream is a beautiful white wedding dress?

Buy a parachute, of course!

So goes the moving story of Lilly Friedman, as first reported in the Jewish Press.

When Lilly, a young Auschwitz survivor, told her fiancé, Ludwig, that she dreamed of wearing a white dress to their wedding, he knew it would not be a simple request to fulfill. Spare fabric was an unobtainable commodity in Bergen-Belsen; survivors were grateful for the few articles of clothing they still possessed. But to Lily, it was more than a frivolous wish — the dress would be a symbol of normalcy and innocence in the wake of death and destruction.

Hashgachah intervened, and Ludwig met a German pilot eager to get rid of his now-worthless parachute in exchange for two pounds of coffee beans and a couple of packs of cigarettes.

“For two weeks,” said Helen Zegerman Schwimmer, “Miriam the seamstress worked under the curious eyes of her fellow DPs, carefully fashioning the six parachute panels into a simple, long sleeved gown with a rolled collar and a fitted waist that tied in the back with a bow. When the dress was completed she sewed the leftover material into a matching shirt for the groom.”

Lilly wore this beautiful white dress when she married on January 27, 1946, in the same Celle synagogue where Mrs. Fran Laufer and hundreds of other Bergen-Belsen couples had wed.

“My sisters and I lost everything,” she says. “Our parents, our two brothers, our homes. The most important thing was to build a new home.”

Six months later, Lilly’s sister Feige wore the dress, and after that came Cousin Rosie.

“How many brides wore your dress?” asked Ms. Zegerman Schwimmer.

“I stopped counting after seventeen,” replied Lilly.

After adorning innumerable brides on their bittersweet wedding nights, Lilly’s gown has finally found a permanent home: the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, where it is displayed in a specially designed showcase, guaranteed to preserve it for 500 years.

In 2007, Lily journeyed back to Bergen-Belsen to view the extraordinary exhibit of her parachute gown temporarily featured in the Bergen-Belsen Museum. Together with her children and grandchildren, she stood on the bimah where she had married and cried.

Two weeks later, she attended the wedding of her granddaughter, Jackie. Their gowns, halls, and dinners were worlds apart, but the brachos they each heard under the chuppah were identical — the brachos that had been recited at their ancestors’ weddings for thousands of years.

And when the final brachah was recited and the crowd responded with a resounding “amen!” another link in the chain had been formed.

Agunos: The Chained Women of the War

Agunah, literally translated as “one who is anchored down,” classically refers to a woman whose husband has disappeared, but there is no proof that he died. Because her husband may still be alive, she is not permitted to marry another man.

Although the tragic predicament of agunos has been addressed for generations, the Holocaust produced an unprecedented number of these unfortunate women. The Germans kept meticulous records of their horrific work, but when they realized they would be defeated, they destroyed much of the documentation. It was therefore practically impossible for a survivor to ascertain a loved one’s whereabouts with certainty.

For a Holocaust agunah, having to provide evidence was particularly agonizing: after facing the probable death of her dear husband, she was now required to prove that he had died with painfully detailed descriptions.

Using their vast halachic knowledge, rabbanim worked tirelessly with the scant circumstantial evidence available to permit these agunos to remarry. Though there were many poskim who issued rulings in this area, Rav Moshe Feinstein and the Klausenberger Rebbe, Rav Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, were particularly active in resolving these cases.

Agunos in the DP Camps

The displaced persons camps were filled with agunos who wanted to remarry. Leaders of the Vaad Hatzalah Rescue Committee realized that this issue — among other halachic issues — demanded immediate attention, and at the Munich conference in 1946, they set up a rabbinical council of qualified Torah scholars, presided by the Klausenberger Rebbe. This council would address the most pressing halachic issues that the DP population faced, which included kashrus, family purity, marriages, divorces, and agunos.

Additionally, a subcommittee of five renowned rabbis was created to exclusively address the agunos issue. Only rabbis appointed by this group — which subsequently became known as the “Agunah Committee” — were permitted to hear evidence pertaining to an agunah sheilah and to arrange marriages of any kind.

Agunim: Chained Men

While the status of agunus is much more widespread and halachically problematic in the case of women, men can also become agunim. In the tenth century, Rabbeinu Gershom issued a cheirem to prevent the occurrence of polygamy; this rabbinical ban was accepted by all of Ashkenazic Jewry. Because they were forbidden to marry more than one woman, Ashkenazic men could become agunim if their wives’ whereabouts became unknown.

The Klausenberger Rebbe himself was an agun after the Holocaust. While he went to great lengths to allow agunos and widowers to remarry after the Holocaust, at times relying on testimonies from people who had seen their spouses being sent “to the left” in the Nazi selections, the Rebbe did not rely on testimonies of his first wife’s death.

Instead, he waited two years before remarrying, and then obtained a heter mei’ah rabbanim. This special rabbinic approval — created by Rabbeinu Gershom — enables a man to marry another woman when he cannot properly divorce his first wife. Only after obtaining this heter did the Rebbe remarry in Elul 1947.

In The Klausenberger Rebbe: the War Years (Targum Press), author Judah Lifschitz relates an incredible story that highlights the divine inspiration granted to gedolim in each generation.

Rav Chanoch Hillel Lichtenstein, a dear friend of the Klausenberger Rebbe and a rav in the Landsberg DP camp, sent a letter to the Rebbe shortly after the war. In the letter, he proposed that a particular agunah be given a heter to remarry based on sound halachic principles, evidence, and reasoning, and asked the Rebbe to join in the ruling. For an unexplained reason, the Rebbe delayed responding to the letter. After a substantial amount of time had passed, Rav Lichtenstein sent a second letter, expressing his surprise at the Rebbe’s uncharacteristic delay in responding to so crucial a matter. The Rebbe continued to ignore the request. A short while later, the woman’s husband appeared. He had been searching for his wife unsuccessfully for months; they now joyfully reunited and began to rebuild their lives together.

“We had each come to the awful realization that most of our immediate families were gone, and the loneliness … was indescribable. We just wanted to find someone to share a life with, to build a home together”

— Mrs. Fran Laufer

“We were all the same ‘poor,’ we were all the same status. You looked for someone with similar values — as close as possible —and that was the only thing that mattered”

— Mrs. Chana Stollman

“The fact they were able to marry, to trust another human being, and to establish deep, loving relationships, is a penetrating reflection of their inner strength”

— Mrs. Brenda Kolatch

“When my brother came to give me a bracha at my bedeken, I never cried in my life as much as I cried then. I poured out all of the longing and pain that was in my heart”

— Mrs. Peska Friedman

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 200)