During World War II, my grandmother, Feigi (Spitzer) Feig, may she live and be well, witnessed many atrocities at the hands of the Nazis. But she retained her positive, upbeat nature and zest for life. However, there’s one harrowing war experience that she feels the need to constantly repeat, as it seems to have left an indelible mark on her soul.

My grandmother grew up in Vishu, a small town in the south of Romania. The town was later annexed to Hungary and taken over by the fascist Hungarian army who helped the Germans turn Vishu into a ghetto. All the Jews in the surrounding areas were taken there.

In 1944, Vishu was rendered “Judenrein,” when my grandmother, her entire family, and the remaining Jews in her town were deported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, my grandmother’s parents and married sister, along with her sister's children were sent to the gas chambers. My grandmother and her younger sisters were kept alive for slave labor. After a few weeks in Auschwitz, my grandmother was transferred to the Danzig work camp. There, the inmates were tasked with constructing an airfield for the German army.

It was at that work camp that my grandmother first met Esther, an educated and aristocratic girl from Budapest. Tall and well-spoken, Esther quickly became a leader of sorts. She had a powerful presence, was perceptive, and knew how to make each person feel valued. All the girls there sought to have a connection with her.

The Nazis, too, recognized Esther’s leadership qualities, and they accorded her civil treatment. Consequently, Esther was not sent off to the airfield each day to do backbreaking labor like the other girls. Rather, she was singled out to act as the private housekeeper and secretary for the various Nazis who oversaw the work there. Esther carried out her duties with dignity and self-assurance, earning the trust of the Nazi overseers.

One Nazi in particular, Herr Schmidt, treated her with something akin to respect, and he often gave her certain privileges that were unheard of for other Jewish girls. Esther took advantage of her position to share extra rations and the other items she received whenever possible. In addition to bringing the hungry girls food, Esther offered words of encouragement to bolster their starving spirits. She adjured them to remain strong and never to give in to despair. She always sought to ease their plight. To the other girls, Esther was a guardian angel, and they revered her.

One evening, while everyone was in the barracks, my grandmother and her fellow prisoners heard shouts coming from the living quarters belonging to one of the SS guards. They heard the Nazi bellowing in his guttural language, sounding like a crazed animal. This was followed by bloodcurdling screams, the high-pitched screams of a young woman being savagely beaten. In the barracks, the girls shook with fear. Tears streamed down their faces when they realized that the girl being beaten was their beloved Esther. They heard the shouting and the inhuman screaming for what seemed an eternity. They were powerless, willing the torture to stop, but unable to do anything to help her. All feared for Esther.

Finally the noises stopped and it was eerily silent. Suddenly, the Nazi Schmidt barged into the barracks and pointed at two girls, ordering them to follow him. White-faced, the girls wordlessly scurried after him. The others were frozen, hearts beating wildly.

Minutes later, the two girls came back carrying a comatose Esther between them. Her appearance was frightening to behold. Her bloodied face was entirely unrecognizable, and her whole body was black from the brutal beating. When she regained consciousness, she fainted again from the pain. That happened several times.

The girls hovered over Esther, trying to minister to her many wounds. Esther, their champion, their dear friend, was in excruciating pain, and every girl felt her suffering keenly. Water was pressed to her lips, but she was not in any state to take even a small sip. She was in so much agony; she seemed more dead than alive. Her expression was dazed, as if in deep shock.

That night was hard on all the girls. Esther lay on the wooden slats that passed for a bed, rocking back and forth, moaning in pain. No one thought she would survive the night.

Yet Esther was stronger than they realized, and to everyone’s immense relief, she slowly recovered. Gradually, her wounds healed and she regained her strength.

After that night, Esther lost her special status and the privileges that came along with it. She now had to work in the airfields like the rest of the inmates. While that did not seem to disturb her in the least, she was distraught over the fact that she was unable to continue helping the girls as before. She had always been the giver. It was hard for her to watch others starve and not be able to bring them food. As Esther worked alongside the others, she seemed far removed, a pensive, determined expression perpetually on her face.

For a long time, Esther did not speak of what happened the night she was beaten. She retreated into herself. At night, she slept uneasily, often waking the others with her heaving sobs.

Several weeks passed. One night, the young women sat in their barracks, commiserating with each other about their suffering. That’s when Esther opened up to the others and finally began to speak about what had happened that fateful night.

Esther had worked according to a specific schedule. The last house she worked in each day was Schmidt’s. She would clean his house, do the laundry, and take care of any necessary paperwork. Each night, Schmidt left food in the kitchen for her to take. That evening when she finished her chores, she saw some bread and vegetables at the usual place on the table. She sat down to eat, when Schmidt suddenly walked in and saw her. “What do you think you are doing?!” he demanded.

Perplexed by his anger, she responded, “I finished cleaning, Herr Schmidt, and now I am eating the supper you left for me.”

Schmidt’s eyes bulged and his face grew red. “I left for you?” he screamed. “How dare you?! That was my food! I have not yet eaten today and you stole my food! You filthy Jewess,” he seethed. “You thief!!” He knocked the bread out of her hand.

Esther stammered an apology and tried explaining that it was unintentional. She had thought the food was left there for her. She offered to go get him more food from the commissary. But the enraged Nazi continued ranting and cursing as he stood over the cowering girl. She begged his pardon, but her apologies only seemed to infuriate him further. And then the brutal and pitiless beating began….

The girls listened to her story in horror. Afterward, they commiserated with her and tried to console her, as she had done for them so many times before. But Esther refused to be comforted.

The experience that night wrought a marked change in Esther. Something intangible in her had been crushed. Something precious and whole in her soul had been destroyed.

It was as if before the whipping she had believed that the SS guards were forced to do what they were doing. She had believed in the spark of goodness in every person, and felt that on some level, the German people were victims of an awful situation larger than themselves. Now, she realized her error. She recognized that while they appeared like other people, in actuality, they were devils masquerading as human beings. She grappled with the implications of having had such close contact with the devils themselves, of having been so blind to their true nature.

A few months after Esther’s beating, the girls were removed from the work camp and were taken on their final journey under the Germans — the Death March. Many people who had survived the camps perished in those last few days before the Nazis were defeated. Eventually, the surviving girls in my grandmother’s group were liberated by the Russians.

About three weeks after liberation, my grandmother was being treated in one of the many makeshift hospitals that tended to the survivors. Many of the women, my grandmother among them, had contracted typhus. All the women were lying on their cots silent, unmoving. The ward was like a tomb.

Shortly after my grandmother got there, a new typhus patient was brought in and placed on the bed adjacent to my grandmother. My grandmother watched out of the corner of her eye as the new patient forced herself into a sitting position. She began to speak, addressing all the ill women. Gradually, my grandmother realized with astonishment that the stranger in the next bed was none other than Esther.

“My beloved sisters!” she intoned, “I speak to you from the depths of my heart. We are all sick and broken, in body and in spirit. Each of us has experienced and witnessed indescribable atrocities; our families murdered before our eyes, our communities decimated, our dignity and even our names stripped away from us.

“But you must know and believe with every fiber of your being that Hashem has chosen us to continue living. Each and every one of us has an important role to play — to rebuild the Jewish Nation! To marry and raise future Yiddishe doros.

“My dear sisters, the Germans have been vanquished, defeated! We have won! They could not stamp us out. We are stronger than they are. Hashem has promised us that we — the Jewish People — will always persevere! We will survive and rebuild! We have a mission to continue being a light unto the nations.

“The Germans — those beasts disguised as human beings — who pretended to be so cultured and civilized, have been exposed as the lowest form of humanity. And we, who have been tortured, killed, humiliated — we never lost our dignity, our humanity. Our souls. We must continue to show the world what it means to be a Jew! The most important thing to remember is to never lose our compassion. To look out for each other, to help one another.

“The Nazis, yemach shemam, are just the last in a long line of enemies who have risen up against us in our long and bitter exile. Remember what they did to us, remember what Amalek has done to you! Pass it on to your future descendants, so that they never forget what happened to us.”

Esther continued talking for a long time. The other women, weak and fragile, listened in awe, as Esther, eyes aflame, exhorted them. Typhus ravaged her body, but an ethereal glow emanated from her face.

Her impassioned speech had a powerful effect on the other patients. Many of the young women had been staring with glassy eyes, apathetic expressions on their gaunt faces. As Esther continued talking, slowly they seemed to come alive, nodding along with her, bolstered by her heartfelt words. Their survival had a purpose! Their lives had meaning!

Esther had always had that ability to uplift, to galvanize others, and to draw them in. Even in that hospital room that smelled of death, Esther’s fervent words penetrated the shells encasing their hearts and touched them. Some women were crying silently; others smiled for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime.

My grandmother recalls thinking that the Jewish world was fortunate to have a person like Esther, an articulate, bold, and brilliant visionary; a person who inhabited a higher plane, yet still dwelled among the people. She felt in her heart that one day, Esther would be a great leader, who would work to improve the lot of all of humanity — and especially every Jew. She was that rare individual sent down to our world to effect change.

The next morning, the doctor was doing his daily rounds checking on the patients. As he passed Esther’s bed, he motioned to the orderlies to come over. The doctor conferred with them briefly and then he pulled the sheet over her head.

It was only when they began to carry Esther’s lifeless body from the room that it dawned on my grandmother, in a mind-crushing moment, that Esther was gone. Her powerful sermons had apparently overworked her fragile body and she had died in her sleep. With her final act of chesed — uplifting her broken sisters — Esther had completed her purpose in This World.

My grandmother suffered many losses during the war. She lost her parents, sister, and many close friends and family. But the loss of Esther took on another dimension. With her had gone the hopes and dreams of a young girl, emblematic of the hopes and dreams of millions of other young idealistic people, just beginning to embark on their journey of self-actualization, who perished, unable to make their mark in the world. My grandmother recognized that with Esther’s death, we had lost a truly unique, courageous voice for the Jewish people.

And part of my grandmother’s spirit also died the morning she realized that the world had lost Esther.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 598)