Dear BFL Families:
Two weeks ago, Rabbi Chaim told me he received a phone call that he would likely never receive again.
“Chaim, it’s Peter. May I ask you for a big favor? Will you help me destroy a Nazi banner my father took from a concentration camp headquarters 75 years ago?”
It turns out Peter’s father fought in the Battle of the Bulge and liberated The Wöbbelin Concentration Camp in Germany. Wöbbelin was established in 1944 to house concentration camp prisoners whom the SS had evacuated from other camps to prevent their liberation by the Allies. When Peter turned 18, his father gave him the huge banner to keep as part of history. With the recent growth of antisemitism and extremism around the world, Peter felt that as much as this banner was historic, there was a greater threat, that this banner might somehow fall into the wrong hands, and that he wanted to avoid that at all cost.
Rabbi Chaim told me he has great respect for Peter. This banner, was a gift his late father given to him to symbolize our victory over the Nazis, and after 75 years he wanted to destroy it with Jewish witnesses. The day Peter chose was Friday, May 8th, the 75th anniversary of our victory over the Nazis.
This is how Rabbi Chaim describes the moment …
“I was surprised by how seeing this banner evoked such intense emotion in me. Before we destroyed it, I wiped my shoes on the swastika. I could not help myself. Then we cut the swastika out and burned it into nothing – without ceremony – sending the banner and what it represented back into the irrelevance that it came from. “
I could see Peter was visibly relieved after we burned the banner and he told me he felt like a burden had been lifted, but he did not want this moment to be just about destruction, that’s what the Nazis were about. I brought with me an Israeli flag which I unfurled and gave to Peter. I asked him, ‘Do you know the name of the National Anthem that goes with this flag?’ “The name represents our greatest victory over the Nazis. It is called HaTikvah – the Hope. Today we are replacing their hate with our Hope.”
As an officer in the IDF, I can tell you we are not motivated by hate, we are motivated by love, to protect or families, and our people. Having said that I know I am not alone in having fantasized many times about if I could only have fought with my unit against the Nazis, and how the IDF would have crushed them! Believe me, we would have. Unfortunately, we did not have a State or an IDF at that time. Now everything is different. The photo below is powerful for me. On the left is Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Hagerman, who was forced by the Nazis to pray to his Jewish brothers and sisters who had just been executed to humiliate him. On the right is our precious Survivor in Israel, surrounded by us, who could be his grandchildren. He wears the same Tallit and Tefillin today and he is not surrounded by hate, he is surrounded by us and he returned to live in the land of hope.
Shabbat Shalom from Israel,
Yaniv
PS We hope you can join our next BFL Zoom Series:
Time: Thursday, May 21, 2020, 12:30 PM Pacific | 3:30 PM Eastern | 10:30 PM Israel
Length: 45 Minutes
Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84640324646?pwd=RUVpREFESFAxVXB2UUoxQ29xZExWUT09
