Yom HaSho'ah, Birthdays...

Yes, today was Yom HaSho'ah. Of course, tomorrow really is, but observed today because tomorrow is Friday and all that...anyway, I just want to share a little bit about Yom HaSho'ah.

So at our Y"Sh thing at school, R' Schiller was talking about how our emunah and mesiras nefesh doesn't even come close to that of the survivors. And we saw a presentation, in which someone told a story of someone who had a gun put to his head by a nazi--Yemach sh'mam vezichram (may their names and memories be erased and obliterated)--officer (like they deserve capitalization?) and was said to him, walk on the Sefer Torah (Torah Scroll) or you die. He said back to the nazi put your gun to my head because there is no way I'm going to degrade God's Name. As Rabbi Schiller put it, "imagine, if the simplest Jew in Poland could do that, imagine how much we have to work on ourselves." I thought that was like, wow.

Indepent of that, even though The Lord had let the Holocaust happen, he is still with us, and with us even in the Holocaust. This is my favorite story.

One of the many survivors in my Hungarian shul was taken to a conentration camp at like, 13, 14 yrs old. This story may have taken place at Buchenvald, where he was at one point, or another camp, I don't remember, In any event, he was told to work in the ammunition factory, and he worked the machine that sized the bullets for guns. If they weren't sized right, then the gun would backfire, explode in the face of the user, stuff like that; it wouldn't be pretty. And if he was caught making the wrong sizes...I'm sure you can guess what would happen to him. One day, this man in my shul was making buckets upon buckets upon buckets FULL of bad bullets. All-of-a-sudden, the inspector was coming. He got nervous, but switched the dials on the machine as quick as possible; at least he'd have SOME good bullets on top. They were scattered among the bad ones. The inspector came, stuck his hand in one of the boxes, took a bullet out, measured it....and lo and behold, it was a good bullet. Don't tell me that wasn't of God's doing...

On a more positive note, again, Adina, happy birthday. I love you!

And another birthday today...my Miriam Ita Notowich in St Louis turned 6 today! Weee! She's just sooo cute. If only you knew...

Aight, Laila tov vachalamot metukim y'all.

Love

Tonny