November 29: A Day To
Remember
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
November 30, 2017
I know it isn’t Purim yet.
That jolly holiday of Hammentaschen
(those wonderful poppy seed- or jelly-filled pastries), of make-believe and
masquerades, won’t be for another three months or so. But Jewish history is
filled with miracles, of days designated to be days of sorrow but which, somehow,
at the very last minute, turn into joyful celebrations instead. And this evening I want to talk about one of
those days: November 29.
Though it isn’t my birthday, I owe my life to that day, and
to the heroes who made it happen.
The story goes back to 1944, but before I get into the story
itself, you need to know something about my mother.
My mother was 16 when World War Two erupted and the Germans
invaded Poland. Within a month the
Germans overran the entire country, including her hometown of Katowice, in the
southern part of Poland, not far from Krakow.
The roundup of the Jewish population began not long afterwards. My mother’s journey of persistence and survival
took her to several ghettoes and prisons, and took nearly five years to
complete. She escaped four times from
the grip of the Nazis, and finally succeeded in reaching Israel—called
Palestine at the time and under the control of the British—in March 1944.
Holocaust survival was often a matter of luck and chance,
but in the case of my mother—as well as a few hundred others—there was yet
another reason. They were all members of
Ha-No’ar Ha-Tzioni, a Jewish youth
group that was organized yet before the war in order to prepare young men and
women to make aliyah to Israel, to
teach them the crafts and skills that they would need as they began a new life
there. When the war broke out, however, the mission of this youth group changed
drastically: they would resist the Nazis and establish escape routes for
themselves and for their families. They
organized into small units, each with its own dedicated purpose: to obtain
weapons, forge passports, establish escape routes and set up safe houses along
the way. My mother was put in charge of
one of those units.
They called themselves Nasza
Groupa—“Our Group”—a simple name that belies the complexity and greatness of
who they were and what they did.
Three other members of this group were Emil Brigg, Danuta
Firstenberg and Olek Gutman. They were
higher up in the group, and their mission was to contact members of the Haganah—the
organization that later became the Israel Defense Force. By then, the Haganah had set up a cell in Budapest,
and from that secret location its members were coordinating rescue and
resistance operations throughout Eastern Europe.
Along the way, however, the three comrades, Emil, Danuta and
Olek, were given another assignment, with fateful consequences.
There was a man by the name of Victor Janikowski, a Jew who,
along with another Jewish kapo—or Nazi
collaborator—tricked Jewish refugees into giving him as much as $2000 a person
(!) to lead them to safety. Janikowski,
however, pocketed the money and secretly delivered the refugees to the German
police. Soon his actions became known to
members of the Groupa. Emil, Olek and Danuta (with assumed Aryan
names and forged papers), were assigned to find and kill Janikowski.
It was a dangerous mission, and though they ultimately succeeded,
the three were soon discovered and arrested by the Gestapo. They were brutally tortured for twenty-one
days, but did not break and did not give away what they knew about the Haganah
cell in Budapest and about their other contacts. Had they betrayed their friends in the Groupa, there is no doubt that only a
very few would have survived. Only three
weeks later, when they were sure that everyone else had managed to escape, did
the three finally give up the information sought by the Nazis.
“You will all die tomorrow,” a Nazi officer informed
them. They were even shown chalk marks
drawn along a brick wall, where they would be made to stand and be shot the
next morning, the morning of November 29, 1944.
But that was not to happen.
Around midnight, these Jewish heroes of the Nasza Groupa heard the
rumble of tanks driving past the prison.
A few hours later, more tanks, going in the other direction. Then a complete silence, broken sporadically
by scattered machine gun fire. As
morning broke, still more tanks arrived.
Looking through a window set high up in the cell, Emil saw that these
were Russian tanks. They were saved. It
was November 29, and it also happened to be Danuta’s birthday.
A day designated for sorrow had turned instead into a day of
liberation and celebration.
But the story of this date does not end here.
Exactly three years later, a vote was held in the United
Nations. On 29 November 1947 (70 years
ago almost to the day), the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition
Palestine into two states: A Jewish
state and an Arab state. The Jewish
government accepted the decision; the Arabs rejected it, but the State of
Israel was now on legal footing, and half a year later David Ben Gurion,
Israel’s first Prime Minister, would declare its independence, reestablishing for
the first time in 2000 years a Jewish homeland, in its historical birthplace,
for the dispersed and dispossessed Jewish People.
Perhaps—as some believe—certain days were designated by some
higher power to be special days. If so,
then November 29 must be one of them.
On the political stage, the Partition vote is still source
of debate and contention, perhaps even more so now than it was then. But the date is also marked annually by
survivors of the Nasza Groupa and
their descendants, who for several decades now have been gathering every year on
or around November 29th to celebrate and retell the miracle of their
survival.
There is an epilogue to this story: After making his way to Israel,
Emil Brigg joined the Israel Defense Force and, following the 1948 War of
Independence, was awarded the army’s highest award, Gibbor Yisrael, “A Hero of Israel.”
He passed away in 2002. May his
memory be a blessing.
For two years, Olek Gutman, who changed his name to Alex
Gatmon, conducted revenge operations against SS officers. Later, after serving in the Israeli Air
Force, he joined Israel’s fabled secret service, the Mossad, and helped capture
Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the Nazi Holocaust. He also was instrumental in the clandestine
rescue of 35,000 Jewish refugees from Morocco, bringing them to safe harbor in
Israel. He died in 1981. May his memory
be a blessing.
Dina Gilboa—the Hebrew name Danuta Firstenberg adopted in
Israel—lived a long life and established a thriving family. She died last year. At this year’s Nasza Groupa reunion and commemoration, held just earlier
today in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dina’s daughter, Shuvit, spoke about her mother. May her memory be a blessing.
L’havdil—to make a
thousand separations— with God’s help we will celebrating my mother’s 95th
birthday this coming January 1. Last
month, her eldest great-granddaughter, Opal, now 17 years old, went on a
school-sponsored trip to Auschwitz and other extermination camps. The airport she landed in was—of all places—Katowice,
my mother’s hometown. Way to close a
circle!!! She—fourth generation
survivor—also spoke at the commemoration today, relating her experiences and
reactions to what she saw, heard and learned.
And so it was that a day, the 29th of November,
had turned from sorrow to celebration, from devastation to renewal. It could have ended otherwise, but instead it
became the beginning of a new life—not only for me, but also for the State of
Israel and for the entire Jewish People.
On Purim we hail Esther as the great hero who saved our
people from imminent destruction. The
truth, however, is that we are here today because of so many heroes, so many
who gave their lives so that we could be here; so many men, women and children who endured untold torture and suffering
to ensure the survival of our people.
May their lives and deeds become a testament to human endurance in the
face of devastation, and may we be worthy and deserving to carry forward the
great responsibility they passed on to us: the continuity of the Jewish People
and its epic legacy.
© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman
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