Did the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto have a monopoly on heroism during the Holocaust? Or were the heroes those that with no gun and no ammunition sanctified G-d’s name and refused to lose their Jewish soul?

My father’s brother was a commander in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  He fell in the final battle that took place during Pesach 5704 (1944) meeting his end in the bunker that was under his command. His wife and little daughter died along with him. That is my personal link to the torture and suffering of the ghetto’s famous last stand.

My uncle’s name was Yisrael Grylak Hy”d. For years his name went unmentioned among the fighters who before they died claimed the lives of the SS men who oppressed them. He wasn’t mentioned because the Leftists took credit for the uprising that became a symbol of Jewish heroism. When the State of Israel was declared those who took power in Eretz Yisrael granted honor and prestige only to people from left-wing Zionist movements such as the Shomer HaTzair. Yisrael Grylak belonged to the Bund a Yiddishist anti-Zionist and anti-chareidi movement. And so he was forgotten just as the Revisionist fighters and even the young Religious-Zionist fighters were deliberately forgotten. After all we Jews are experts at holding on to machlokes even at the gates of Gehinnom.

Of course forty or fifty years ago it was upsetting to see my uncle relegated to oblivion. Since then however the wrong has been partly righted. Today books and articles are not afraid to mention those fighters who weren’t from the politically-correct Leftist groups when they discuss that lost battle.

But there was something deeper more fundamental in the propaganda of the Left in those days.

They were intoxicated with their own success caught up in the idea of  “My strength and the power of my hand have accomplished this feat for me.” And so they glorified the desperate Warsaw Ghetto fighters as the height of Jewish heroism a model to be emulated comparable to those who took a last stand at Masada at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple -- those who would not surrender although their situation was hopeless.

This distorted view caused all these fighting heroes to look with scorn upon the millions of Jews who were brought like sheep to the slaughter like the dust of history with no show of Jewish pride no physical resistance. I can still remember the arrogant words of a young paratrooper officer in those long-ago days who proclaimed “If we had been there one unit of paratroopers could have defeated all those Nazis.” It was a provocative statement that prompted one outraged partisan himself an aligned political Leftist to write a pamphlet entitled “Like Sheep to the Slaughter?”

Because whoever was there in that Gehinnom knew that the Jewish masses simply had no choice.

Yes we were angered pained and offended by the attempt to dismiss the heroism of our families – the courage to preserve their Jewish dignity in that Nazi cesspool to sacrifice the honor of their memory in order to mythologize a few dozen youths who died with weapons in their hands. We wouldn’t stand for that. We honored the heroism of Jews who kept their Jewish integrity up to the moment of death who strove to keep the mitzvos as much as they could in the ghetto in Auschwitz in Buchenwald.

The failure to present these stories of Jewish courage and hold them up as a  symbol a banner before the Jewish people proclaiming that they died in the name of Jewish heroism -- that if their hands were shackled their hearts were unbroken even in face of certain death -- is a distortion of the spiritual and historical truth. Eventually these true acts of courage were documented. and today we cite these as examples to teach our children the meaning of kiddush Hashem.

 In the 1950s and 60s however nobody was listening to our complaints. The public was intoxicated with power and nobody in the political or cultural leadership of Israel was losing any opportunity to besmirch the names and desecrate the memory of those millions of Jews.

I remember when a ray of light flickered for me; it was in 1965 not long before the Six Day War and I was called up to serve in the reserves in Beit Guvrin which was then near the Jordanian border. On the morning of 27 Nisan Yom HaShoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day I took part in an assembly in honor of the day.  A young officer from a Shomer HaTzair kibbutz gave a short speech and of course he spoke of the fighting heroes led by Uprising commander Mordechai Anilovitz who proclaimed “no more shall we die like sheep to the slaughter ” and all the rest of the clichés that make up the traditional Israeli lexicon.

But then to my surprise he added a few words that deviated totally from the ideas he was raised on. He said that in his view a young Jewish woman in Auschwitz who gathered specks of fat so she could kindle a Shabbos light was no less heroic. This young man so removed from the experience of Jewish life could still recognize that keeping Hashem’s mitzvos in the Gehinnom of Auschwitz was a symbol of Jewish courage. At that moment I felt the winds of change that even those who were far removed from faith would comprehend the uniqueness of authentic Jewish heroism that kept the Divine image and Jewish humanity intact even in the face of death.

Indeed that young officer proved to be a harbinger of things to come. Years passed and similar voices were beginning to be heard.

Let me cite the words of Yehudah Bauer a renowned chronicler of the Holocaust notorious for his hostility to the chareidi community.

Describing an event that occurred in December 1941 when a group of inmates set fire to eight strips of cardboard and sang Maoz Tzur he wrote: “These men were not religious. On the threshold of death in the hell of Auschwitz they demonstrated and proved several points: That in contrast to Nazi doctrine they were human beings. That when faced with Auschwitz there was meaning for them in Jewish tradition in Jewish history and values. That they wished to emphasize the fact that they were human beings in the Jewish way… was this any less of an uprising than an armed rebellion with rifles in hand?”

The fascinating thing about Yehudah Bauer’s story is that its heroes were secular Jews who chose to use a mitzvah as their show of resistance to the Nazis.

Another fascinating story by another secular Holocaust writer highlights a similar feeling: at one of the camps a group of starved shriveled inmates was taken out for forced labor in an apple orchard. It was Yom Kippur. The Nazi commander who knew what this day meant to the Jews announced “Today you may eat as much as you like!” One of the Jews became alarmed and cried out “It’s Yom Kippur today!” and not one of the men ate from the apples. The writer pointed out that even among the most non-observant members of the group not one man took one bite of an apple. They would not break in front of the Nazis.

Who is like Your people Israel?

Permit me to close with one more story that shows what powerful repercussions one incident of Jewish heroism can have on future generations.

I was once traveling in the company of one of the most influential figures in the baal teshuvah world in whose home I had delivered Torah shiurim for years. As we passed by a roadside tavern near Herzliya my friend slowed down the car and said “That’s where I used to stop at least once a week to buy davar acher (pork). Once when I was waiting on the checkout line I suddenly thought of my grandfather who refused to eat treif even in a Nazi labor camp which made the Nazi officers very angry. Finally the day came when the camp was about to be liberated. The Soviets were closing in. Just before making his getaway one of the Nazi officers grabbed my grandfather and told him ‘Look we’re about to run away. In just a few hours your fellow inmates will be free. But you won’t be with them. You can only win your life by eating the treif meat I’m about to give you. If you won’t eat it I’ll shoot you.’

“And my grandfather on the verge of liberation wouldn’t eat it. The Nazi kept his word. He shot my grandfather and then fled.

“Suddenly I thought and I’m standing here brazenly buying treif. I was disgusted with myself. That was when I first began to do teshuvah.”

A Jew’s heroism brought his grandson back to the path of Judaism two generations later.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day this week changes are in the air. And on this day I am also lighting a candle in memory of my uncle who I am sure has been purified and raised through the levels of kedushah — because like all those slaughtered in the Holocaust he was killed for being a Jew.

Food for Thought

People take such care not to swallow a live ant

yet they take no care not to swallow a human being alive

(Rebbe Baruch of Medzibuzh)