As observant Jews who take history seriously, we might wonder—after attending Holocaust commemorations for decades, are there still stories out there that can surprise us, shake us and make us look at the harrowing events in a new light?
The Yom HoShoah event held by the Young Israel of East Brunswick (YIEB) on Thursday, April 28, offered a resounding “yes” to that question.
After a collective recitation of the Star Spangled Banner, Hatikvah, and the Keil Ma’aleh Rachamim, YIEB’s Rabbi Joshua Hess formally welcomed everyone in attendance. Quoting a Yom HaShoah benediction authored by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Hess said in part: “We can’t change the past, but we can change the future. And we do so by committing ourselves to one simple act—Yizkor, to remember.”
Auschwitz survivor Lois Flamholz started her talk by thanking everyone who came out to the event, stating: “The more people I tell my story to, the more likely such a terrible thing will never happen again.”
She recounted her early childhood in a village in the Czech Republic and the arrival of German troops in 1944, who rounded up the Jews and sent them to a ghetto nearby and later to Auschwitz. Despite the passage of over 76 years, she could still clearly recall the disorienting scene of her arrival at the concentration camp, with German soldiers yelling at them, the different line ups of men and women, and older and younger adults, and the presence of Dr. Joseph Mengele, who silently pointed at different prisoners and sealed their fates.
Flamholz described the next dehumanizing moments, when she, along with a few cousins, was marched to a bathhouse, stripped of her clothes in the presence of German soldiers, had all their hair shaved off, given prison clothes, and then marched to the barracks.
As she arrived at Auschwitz as a teenager, Flamholz received various labor assignments there and later at another work camp. Towards the end of the war, a German commander told her and the other women that they’d be leaving the camp and asked that if they were captured by United States or Russian soldiers, that the prisoners speak well of their captors. The Germans then forced the women to march for 30 kilometers a day for six weeks, finally arriving at Bergen Belsen, where they were liberated by English soldiers.
Flamholz remembered that the well-meaning English soldiers gave the liberated and emaciated prisoners whatever food items they had on hand, which led to the death of many of her severely malnourished friends. After spending time in a hospital, then returning to her hometown, Flamholz went with her cousins to live in Sweden. She then sought out relatives in the US and found her way here, where she attended night school and met her husband. They now have 14 great-grandchildren, which are her greatest joy.
Jack Muchnick, a member of YIEB, shared stories about his father Nathan’s service in the Intelligence Division of the US Army in Europe during World War II. In that capacity, he infiltrated enemy lines in June 1944, did reconnaissance at German munitions depots, forged documents, and served as a translator between high level Allied military leaders.
Towards the war’s end, Muchnick volunteered to help with Nazi hunting and his group sought one particular officer, known for his ruthlessness during Kristalnacht—Colonel Otto Schmidt. The group tracked him to a chateau and found him in a closet. Muchnick began to interrogate Schmidt, until a fellow US Army officer asked him to look at a painting of Schmidt and his wife that looked unusual. Muchnick took the painting out of its frame and discovered that it was painted on a Torah klaf that had been partially rubbed out by the Germans. Looking closer at the klaf, Muchnick recognized that it was a section of the Torah scroll from his bar mitzvah parsha.
After the war ended, Muchnick remained in Germany, near Frankfort. As the time of the chagim approached, he persuaded his commander to allow him to use 230 German soldiers in a nearby POW camp to clean up and restore the one synagogue still standing in Frankfort, which the Nazis had used as a stable. They were able to restore the shul fully and Muchnick, a trained chazzan, led the davening for Rosh Hashanah, which drew thousands of attendees from among the US Army soldiers in that theater. The services also attracted the attention of General Dwight Eisenhower, who visited and remarked that he wished they had a prayer leader like Muchnick in Eisenhower’s church back home.
Jack Muchnick shared that at the services, his father noticed one man who attended shrouded in a tallit. When the man let down his tallit briefly, Muchnick noticed that he was emaciated and his eyes appeared hollowed. He later asked the Jewish chaplain in the area if he knew the story of that man.
The chaplain explained that “Mr. Greenbaum” had the grim job of removing the bodies from the gas chambers and throwing them on a truck, which would take them to the crematoria to be burned. He began to go about his work without looking at the bodies until, one day, he noticed that a body he’d just thrown onto the truck seemed lighter than usual. He looked at the truck and saw to his horror that the body was that of his daughter.
A Nazi soldier forced “Greenbaum” to return to his work. As the truck was about to pull away, Greenbaum noticed that his daughter stretched out an arm and he realized that he had just sent his own child to be burned alive. His faith was completely shattered.
Years later, Muchnick unexpectedly met Greenbaum in a shul in New York. Greenbaum told him that “when I heard you daven that Rosh Hashanah, I realized that I had to go on and God had plans for me. Thank you for bringing hope back to my neshama.” Greenbaum made his way to the United States, remarried, and built a new family.
Commenting after the program, Leon Paley, a member of YIEB, said: “I have read both Primo Levi’s ‘Survival in Auschwitz’ and Olga Lengyel’s ‘Five Chimneys.’ I found it very moving to hear Lois Flamholz’s survival at Auschwitz and how much it sounded like what I read in those books. And Jack Munchnick’s talk about his father was a truly a remarkable story that, at the end, was all about healing.”
“I was amazed by Lois,” said Sandy Lang, one of the organizers of the program. “She spoke without as much as a note written down. She told me that while, at 94, she can’t remember things that happened yesterday, her memories of the Holocaust are so vivid, she recalls every detail.”
