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WHO PREPARES THE STEPS OF MAN |
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Welcome to HashgachaPratis.Com Personal accounts of Divine Providence on the web. Thank you for stopping by to read our stories. Share your own story by filling out our online form. The goal is to create an awareness that G-d's all-powerful hand is guiding and carrying us through this intriguing journey called life.
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G-d appoints an angel and tells it to cause a blade of grass to grow. Only then does that tiny blade flourish.° This is true of every minute detail in nature. All the more so, every action or event that happens be it personal or global, occurs only because G-d willed it to happen. It is part of a master plan. 1 °Bereshis Rabbah 10:7 |
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Featured Story |
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Story Of The Year |
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Angel With An Apple
By: Herman Rosenblat NY August, 1942. Piotrkow , Poland : The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women, and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. "Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen." I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age. "Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood. My mother was motioned to the right-with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her. "No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her. My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany . We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barracks. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. "Don't call me Herman anymore," I said to my brothers. "Call me 94983." I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead onto a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened. I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin . One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear. A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, behind the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone -a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German, "Do you have something to eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow." I didn't believe she would come back. It was much too dangerous. But I returned anyway, the same time the next day. And there she was. The same girl. She moved tentatively from behind the tree, and once again threw something over the fence. This time, a small hunk of bread wrapped around a stone. I ate the bread, gratefully and ravenously, wishing there had been enough to share with my brothers. When I looked up the girl was gone. I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat-a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her-just a kind farm girl-except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples. Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia . "Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples. We were at Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited. At 8:00 A.M., there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come. Eventually, I made my way to England , where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America , where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in. One day, my friend Sid-whom I knew from England-called me. "I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date." A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life. The four of us drove out to Coney Island . Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time. We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject. "Where were you," she asked softly, "during the war?" "The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you never forget. She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Germany , not far from Berlin ," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers." I imagined how she must have suffered too-fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world. "There was a camp next to the farm," Roma continued. "I saw a boy there, and I would throw him apples every day." What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look like?" I asked. "He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months." My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it.this couldn't be.. "Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?" Roma looked at me in amazement. "Yes." "That was me!" I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel. "I'm not letting you go," I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait. "You're crazy!" she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word: After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go. |
"Gosh! I'm such an idiot!," Thought Shim as he sat there, frozen on the
cold subway bench, digging his fingernails into his forehead. "I mean
seriously, who brings a briefcase with $30,000 in cash onto a crowded
train...". As Shim began to prepare the speech that would probably end his short lived business career, he thought about what his wife would say when he would suggest selling their humble house and moving into her parents' basement. "Honey- you always wanted to live close to your parents anyways..."! No...he realized. He would have to stay, right where he was, sitting like the five-foot-four junior varsity bench-warmer he was, freshman year in M.T.A., for the rest of his life. "Ess'cuse me Rabbi, but did yous happen to lothe you a' bag..?'" Came a booming voice several feet over Shim's head. Shim quickly stood up and soon found himself face-to-chest with the biggest blackest black man he had yet to fully see. Seconds later Shim was staring in disbelief at his own brown leather Louis Vuitton briefcase which, although opened, still held the $30,000 in hard cold cash. After a few minutes of intense handshakes and a steady stream of relieved gratitude, Shim finally mustered up the the courage, and asked his new and only dark-skinned friend- Jamal Wills a.k.a. 'lil Willy'- a very Jewish question. "Are you crazy? You found $30,000 in cash in a bag, and decided to return it to its rightful owner!?" Jamal didn't hesitate for a second, "Well call me crazy.. but along wit yo' money i found your picture I.D.- Rabbi", "...and?" Shim wasn't sure where the big guy was going. "...And my Daddy told me along time ago... dat a blessing from a Jew is worth more than all the money in da whole wide world." Shim, with chills running down his spine and thanks to Hashem Yisborach, put on his best Rabbi impersonation and gave Jamal Wills the most sincere, heartfelt bracha (blessing) he had ever given anybody. But wait... there's more. That night Jamal Wills told his wife, Ashante Shakweela, about the wonderful blessing he had received from a Jew- and how it had only cost $30,000. After many droppings of the certain slurs and other assorted expletives, Ashante Wills told her Jack-'n-the-Bean-Stalk-actin husband to sleep on the couch while she locked herself and a bottle of Greygoose vodka in the bedroom. The next morning Jamal couldn't move. It wasn't his aching back, which had an indent from his two-year-old daughter Lashonda's hard plastic toy thingy.... it was his stomach. Cramps. ...The killing kind. "Look how your (expletive) blessing is helping you now!" yelled Ashante as she smacked her husband in the gut sending him back to the couch as he yelped in agony. Jamal called in sick, drank a bottle of thick something, and flipped on the TV. Lying there he wondered if it had been worth it all. Maybe he should've just kept the money. His dad was a good man but had been wrong about many things... ...But then he saw the tall building where he worked as custodian come on the screen. ...Only something was very wrong. ...And as he watched in horror as the towers came tumbling down...he realized that $30,000 was practically nothing for the blessing from a Jew. |
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| 1 For a discussion as to why this doesn't contradict bechira (free-will) see this article by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan Ztz"l. |