The Bus Ride That Saved a Life
by Dovid Zaklikowski for Hasidic Archives
The young Rose Gelbar watched from behind a large piece of furniture as the Germans discovered her family in a bunker. It had been just a short while earlier that her mother had gone to find food for the family, never to return. Rose was left alone in the world, with no parents, siblings, or first cousins.
At Ellis Island, she was met by a second cousin who lived comfortably in New Jersey. However, upon seeing that he had forsaken any semblance of Jewish observance, she decided that despite how difficult life might be, she had not survived the war to abandon her Judaism.
She soon found herself in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. There she slept on the floor and worked hard for every penny. Slowly she began rebuilding her life and eventually met Sam Schachter, who worked in the printing industry.
The young couple moved to the Crown Heights neighborhood. While she was happily married, had food on the table, and could practice her Judaism freely, one issue remained: she had no children.
At one point she pleaded with her gynecologist to do something. He looked her in the eyes and said, “When hair grows on the palm of my hand, you will have a child.” He did not intend to be rude; he simply meant to tell her to move on with her life without children. But to her, it felt as if a building had collapsed on her.
After twelve years of waiting and anticipating, the ups and downs of trying to have a child, she felt crushed. As the sole survivor of her immediate family, she would be the only one to continue her family line. Her inability to give birth felt like a betrayal not only of herself, but of her father, mother, brother, and sisters.
That morning she paid the fare for the Madison Avenue bus line and resolved that she would never get off. The bus ran up and down Madison Avenue, and when it finally returned to the parking lot for the night, the driver told her she had to get off.
The woman refused. “I have nothing to live for.”
The driver took off his cap and said, “Mrs. listen. I’ve had a hard day. I don’t know what your problem is, but whatever it is, it’s not going to be solved by sleeping in a bus garage.”
Then he hollered, “Get off the bus, and get on with your life!”
Raised in a Chassidic home, she had learned that whatever you hear carries a message, whether from a sage or from a bus driver. She took his words to heart and gave herself a new perspective on life. A year later she had a son, Fischel.
He was her only child, and she would wait at the window every day for him to come home from school. But by the time he walked through the door, she would retreat to the back of the house. He was her only child, but she did not want him to feel overburdened by that fact.
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