Pearl Benisch, Auschwitz Survivor and Author, and A Life Devoted to Holocaust Education

Pearl Benisch lived until 100, and in her later years she devoted herself to one central mission of passing the lessons of the Holocaust on to future generations.

A first contribution: The Spirit That Triumphed Over the Dragon

Benisch’s first major contribution to Holocaust education was the popular book The Spirit That Triumphed Over the Dragon. In it she documented her own experiences during the Holocaust alongside the stories of nine friends who together formed a tight-knit group in Auschwitz. That group — known in Holocaust research literature as the “Zenerschaft” (the Ten), became a model and proof of how far the human spirit can rise even in a deathly place like Auschwitz.

“If I could erase the traumatic memories of the Holocaust from my mind — I would not,” she said in an interview with Esh HaTorah. “I learned so much in that university of suffering. I grew from it. I don’t want to forget it. I want to teach my children about it. I want to tell my children and all future generations what a human being is — how a person can sink to the depths of evil, and how a person can raise themselves to the highest heights and be greater than an angel.”

Kraków, Bais Yaakov and the Values That Carried Her Through

Pearl Benisch was born in Kraków, Poland, in 1917 to parents Leib and Chaya Frida Mandelker, devout Jews who raised a model religious household. Her brothers studied Torah day and night, and even in the death camps they were known for studying Torah by night after exhausting days of forced labor. The Mandelker family home was on the same street where Sarah Schenirer — the founder of the Bais Yaakov movement — lived, and Benisch had the privilege of being among Schenirer’s students. (Years later Benisch would write the most comprehensive biography of Sarah Schenirer and the revolutionary movement she founded: Sha’oni BeLevachem.)

The lessons she absorbed at school and the informal education she received from being close to Sarah Schenirer stayed with Pearl even after she arrived in Auschwitz. At the camp she found nine companions — nine young women, fellow Bais Yaakov pupils. One of the prisoners who held a relatively elevated role and somewhat better conditions was Tzila Orlian, a Bais Yaakov teacher the girls had studied with. In her book Benisch describes in detail what these young women did to save one another, to help others, and to keep Torah and mitzvot as best they could under the camp’s conditions.

“I should have written a book about Tzila Orlean on her own,” Benish later sighed. The accounts in The Spirit That Triumphed Over the Dragon reveal the extraordinary spiritual strength of this young teacher. For example, Tzila Orlean (later Rebbetzin Tzila Sorotzkin) would light a single Sabbath candle every Friday evening. Women from the barracks would gather around her and draw comfort and encouragement from the blessing over the candle and the lone flame in the darkness. One Friday, however, the Nazi guard’s footsteps were heard outside the door. The frightened women begged, “Tzila, blow out the candle!” But she refused: “This is my Sabbath candle, and I will not extinguish it.” The Nazi who entered found her standing by the candle, looking at him. For a moment he stared in astonishment — then left without a word.

Sacrifice, Solidarity and Miracles in Selections

Benisch recounts acts of devotion among the friends that seem almost angelic. During one of the infamous selections — the process that decided who would be sent to the gas chambers and who would be kept for forced labor — Pearl and Sarah Blaugrund were judged weak and sent to the left (toward death). Rivka Horowitz and Rachel Shanzer were sent to the right (toward life). But the friends refused to abandon one another: Rivka and Rachel slipped into the left group and tried to drag their friends back into the lines of women awaiting sorting.

Again they were brought before the doctor, and again the results were the same: Pearl and Sarah — left, Rivka and Rachel — right. The women who had been sent to life kept returning to the line for their friends. Once more, when the selection ended, Sara and Pearl were destined for the gas chambers while Rivka and Rachel clung to them.

“We cried, screamed, begged them,” Benisch later recalled. “Why come with us to death? I said to them: it’s not only your lives here — it’s the lives of future generations. You have no right to do this. Go back to where you belong!” But they were determined. When the selection ended, all four of us were led to the ‘death block,’ where the condemned women waited their turn for the gas chambers.

Then another rescue took place. Someone knocked at the barracks door. The block supervisor opened it and in walked Tilly Rinder — another Bais Yaakov alumna and a dear friend of Pearl’s, who worked in the camp infirmary and risked her life daily to help others. With her came Toni Katz, another of those extraordinary women who, even in Auschwitz, found time to think of others. “They told us: girls, hurry and come with us and hide in the shadows,” Benisch wrote. The six young women moved silently, pressed to the walls. Guards were ordered to shoot anyone found wandering, yet they reached the barracks where the rest of the group waited. “I feared for our rescuers, not for us — we were already signed for death,” Benisch said. “I prayed that God would protect them.” And He did — for all of them.

Survival, Family and a Life of Teaching

Pearl and her friends survived the war — as did Tzila Orlean and Tilly Rinder. Benisch went on to build a proud Jewish family and split her time between the United States and Israel. In the last decades of her life she dedicated herself to education, ensuring that the lessons she had learned in the Holocaust would not be forgotten.

“The education we received was to always help people, no matter the cost,” she replied simply when asked where they found the strength to sacrifice for one another. “We are in this world to give. We give in order to live. As long as you give — you live. When you stop giving — you no longer live, you merely exist.”

Faith and a Phrase She Repeated

Benisch never raised questions about God’s role. “I was taught to believe that everything God does is for the good,” she said. “It is very hard to go through a period like the Holocaust, but we went through it. There is a verse in Tehillim that I used to say over and over in the camps: ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.’ We experienced so many nights, but we always believed morning would come. We believed God wanted us to survive, to be witnesses, to tell the world about the greatness of our people in those days. And indeed, we were privileged to live and to tell."