Survivor Answers: Where Was G-d During the Holocaust?

In recent months, the students of Chabad Girls Academy have been studying about the Holocaust, as part of their curriculum. They have completed research projects and created artwork, along with a beautiful presentation which they presented to their classmates.

The highlight of this project was to hear a live account of a Holocaust survivor whose message is positive and would help strengthen their belief in Hashem.

On Wednesday night, March 11, the girls hosted an event at their school for the community with guest speaker Rabbi Nissan Mangel, and heard his incredible story of survival.  The students displayed their work, and their excitement was felt as the room filled up with people.

Mrs. Devorah Leah Angyalfi, Director of Chabad Girls Academy and Jewish History teacher, started off the evening by introducing Rabbi Mangel and thanking him for coming to speak and share his personal account of survival.

Students were asked to speak and share what they had researched thus far.   Tonya Tessler spoke about the righteous gentile, Mayor Chrysostoms of Zakinthos, Greece, a man who single-handedly saved an entire community of Jews by hiding them in the mountains.

Salome Allouche shared what she researched about Rabbi Mangel’s story and other accounts that left her empowered to be Jewish from seeing the kindness of Jews within the Holocaust who never gave up hope despite the odds against them.

Rabbi Mangel warmly addressed the students and the crowd.  With amazing clarity and detail he described the events that led to his arrival in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and how he took part in the infamous death march at the young age of ten.

The experience he described as a young child was filled with an incredible amount of unimaginable pain and suffering.  He endured tremendous difficulties being in harsh winter weather with no food and walking through heavy snow for miles on foot.

He developed excruciating pain from inadequate shoes, and Rabbi Mangel described the progression of his muscle and tissue tearing away to reveal bare bone.  The pain was so great at one point that the little boy began to contemplate suicide.  From the Nazi perspective, it meant walking out of the straight line and getting shot immediately.

Then, with choked up tears, he related how miraculously, a vision appeared to him of his mother.  She was smiling radiantly at the sight of her loved ones singing songs at her beautifully set Shabbos table.  This reassuring vision seemed to mesmerize the young child and he decided not to carry out his own demise.  With little hope and no strength to continue, the young boy experienced several instances where a similar vision stopped him from a suicidal death.

At one point when the boy lost all feeling in his left foot he wanted to finally just end it all, but a Nazi soldier appeared with a canteen full of hot sweet black coffee which he gave to the young Mangel to drink from.  Strangely enough he even struck up a conversation with the boy and continued to revive him with the drink periodically until their destination was reached.  Later on as Rabbi Mangel recorded his story post-war, he concluded that this Nazi was most probably Eliyahu Hanavi.

Rabbi Mangel expressed his deep and sincere thoughts about how the lesson from his story can apply to all of us in our lives daily lives, saying, “No matter how difficult our circumstances are in our lives we can and must always remember, A JEW IS NEVER ALONE!”

The evening concluded with panel questions by the students which were patiently answered by Rabbi Mangel.  Tohar Benjamin asked him, “How did you still believe in G-d after all you had been through?” He answer was that everything he went through proved to him there is a G-d and made him really strong.

It was a great privilege to be in the company of Rabbi Mangel and hear him speak. The students were inspired and moved.  One shared, “Before I heard this account, I had a hard time believing in G-d, but after hearing him, I’m convinced there is a G-d.”

chabadHighlights from CJ STUDIOS on Vimeo.

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