Parshas Bo 5786
- Torah Tavlin
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
והיה לאות על ידכה ולטוטפת בין עיניך כי בחזק יד הוציאנו ה' ממצרים ... (יג-טז)
While he was in Dachau, a Jew who was being taken to his death suddenly flung a small bag at Judah Wallis. He caught it, thinking it might contain a piece of bread. Upon opening it, however, he was disturbed to discover a pair of tefillin. Judah was very frightened because he knew that were he to be caught carrying tefillin, he would be put to death instantly. So he hid the tefillin under his shirt and in the morning, just before the appel [roll call], while still in his bunkhouse, he put on the tefillin. Unexpectedly, a German officer appeared. He ordered him to remove the tefillin and noted the number on Judah’s arm.
At the appel, in front of thousands of silent Jews, the officer called out Judah’s number and he had no choice but to step forward. The German officer waved the tefillin in the air and said, “Dog! I sentence you to death by public hanging for wearing these.” Judah was placed on a stool and a noose was placed around his neck. Before he was hanged, the officer said in a mocking tone, “Dog, what is your last wish?” Judah replied instantly: “To wear my tefillin one last time.”
The officer was dumfounded. He handed Judah the tefillin. As Judah put them on, he recited the verses that are said while the tefillin are being wound around the fingers: "וארשתיך לי לעולם: וארשתיך לי בצדק ובמשפט ובחסד וברחמים: וארשתיך לי באמונה וידעת את ה'" - I will betroth you to me forever and I will betroth you to me with righteousness and with justice and with kindness and with mercy and I will betroth you to me with fidelity, and you shall know G-d.”
The entire camp was forced to watch this Jew, with a noose around his neck wearing tefillin on his head and arm, as they awaited his impending hanging. Even women from the adjoining camp were lined up at the barbed wire fence that separated them from the men’s camp, forced to watch this horrible sight. Judah turned to look at the silent crowd. He saw tears in many people’s eyes. Even at that moment, as he was about to be hanged, he was shocked. Jews were crying! How was it possible that they still had tears left to shed? And for a stranger? Where were those tears coming from? Impulsively, in Yiddish, he called out, “Yidden, do not cry. I am the victor. Don’t you understand, I am the winner!”
The German officer understood the Yiddish and was infuriated. He grabbed the noose off of Judah’s neck and screamed, “You dog, you think you are the winner? Hanging is too good for you. You are going to get another kind of death.”
Judah was taken from the stool and forced into a squatting position. Two huge rocks were placed under his arms. Then he was told that he would be receiving 25 lashes to his head - the head on which he had dared to position his tefillin. The officer told him that if he dropped even one rock, he would be shot immediately. The officer laughed and advised him, “Do yourself a favor. Drop the rocks now. You will never survive 25 lashes to the head. Nobody ever does.”
Somewhere close to the 25th lash, Judah lost consciousness and was left for dead. The crowd of Yidden were ordered to move on and his body was dragged over to a pile of corpses, after which he would have been burned in a ditch. Suddenly, another Jew saw him, shoved him to the side, and covered his head with a rag so people didn’t realize he was still breathing. Eventually, after he recovered consciousness fully, he crawled to the nearest bunkhouse that was on raised piles and hid under it until he was strong enough to come out under his own power. Two months later he was liberated.
During the hanging and beating episode, a 17-year-old girl had been watching the events from the women’s side of the fence. She cried like everyone else, and was amazed at the strength of character of a man slated for death, who refused to give in. After liberation, she found her way to Judah. She walked over to him and said, “I’ve lost everyone and everything. I don’t want to be alone any more. I saw what you did that day when the officer wanted to hang you. Will you marry me?”
Judah agreed and they went to the Klausenberger Rebbe zt”l and requested that he perform the marriage ceremony. The Rebbe, whose Kiddush Hashem is legendary, wrote out a kesubah [which the family still has today] by hand from memory and married the couple. They ultimately made Aliya and rebuilt their lives in the Holy Land. (R’ Yosef Wallis, Aish.com)