From Buchenwald to Chief Rabbi of Israel: The Inspiring Life and Faith of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau

If someone had told eight-year-old Lolek that one day he would dine with the Queen of England, speak Yiddish with the Pope, or sit beside the Chancellor of Germany, listening to the Hassidic melody “Ani Ma’amin” (“I Believe with Perfect Faith in the Coming of the Messiah”), he would never have believed it. Or perhaps he would have. Because Lolek, the youngest child to survive the Buchenwald concentration camp, had grown used to miracles.

He survived thanks to a chain of wonders: his mother pushed him into his brother’s arms moments before she was taken to her death; his brother smuggled him repeatedly from camp to camp and train to train; time after time he was caught, faced death — and survived. Together the brothers fulfilled their father’s final wish and immigrated to the Land of Israel. Lolek grew up to continue a rabbinic dynasty over a thousand years old and became Israel’s Chief Rabbi: Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. In 2005 he received the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement and now serves as Chairman of Yad Vashem.

Below is a selection of Rabbi Lau’s reflections on the Holocaust, faith, and rebirth.

On Questions and Doubts About Faith

“Have you never had doubts?” asked the interviewer. “Tell me about the questions.” Rabbi Lau replied from the depths of his heart: “King David says, ‘How great are Your works, O Lord; Your thoughts are very deep.’ ‘Your works’ are the things visible to the eye — night, morning, sun, moon, stars, the depths of the sea. David says, ‘Your works’ are beyond me; how much more so Your ‘thoughts’ — far beyond my understanding.

The answer to the question of ‘why’ — why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper, why babies die — there are explanations, entire books have been written, including the Book of Job. But I’ll give you a practical answer about the Holocaust: What is the alternative? To hand victory to the murderers or to the victims? If you turn your back on the God of Israel out of anger — no Shabbat, no holidays, no tallit, no tefillin, you hand the key of victory to those who sought to destroy not only the Jewish people but Judaism itself.

They said, ‘Let us cut them off so the name of Israel will be remembered no more.’ I decided the killers of my father, my mother, and my 13-year-old brother do not deserve the victory. The victory belongs to my parents, because they know their grandchildren live in Israel. All my grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, live in Israel. The Jewish people live. The chain continues. Sons have been ordained rabbis — the 39th generation, whose number equals ‘tal’ (dew) in gematria (numerical value), this is the dew of resurrection.” (Interview with Orot TV)

Why He Calls Himself “Insanely Optimistic”

“You’re an insanely optimistic Jew,” the interviewer said in amazement. Rabbi Lau smiled: “I have good reasons. I live contrary to every law of nature. Six years without a doctor, without vaccines, under subhuman conditions — freezing cold, and constant hunger. You dream of a potato. Beatings for nothing. Humiliation. Loneliness. No father, no mother, no siblings. And yet, at that age, to come out alive — if that’s not a reason to be optimistic, what is? Is there another person in the world who deserves to be as optimistic as I am? After such a childhood, to build a family, and a home — there’s no reason for despair.” (Orot TV)

“In Buchenwald I Had No Name — Only a Number”

“My name is Yisrael Meir Lau, but in Buchenwald I had no name. I was a number: 117030. Only later did I discover who I was. My father, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau, perished in Treblinka. He instructed my brother, Naftali Lau-Lavie, later Israel’s consul in New York, that if by some miracle we survived we had only one destination: Eretz Yisrael.

On the day of liberation, April 11, 1945, bullets whistled and bombs fell. We ran to the gate; there was a heap of corpses. American jeeps stormed in. A Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Schechter, jumped from a jeep, pistol in hand, looked at the bodies, and then saw me. He realized I was a Jewish child. He took me in his arms and asked in Yiddish, ‘What’s your name? Who are you?’ I said, ‘Lolek, from the Lau family.’ He asked, ‘Are you related to the famous Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau?’ I said, ‘He was my father.’ The officer began to weep.

Then he asked me, ‘How old are you, my boy?’ I answered: ‘What difference does it make how old I am? I’m older than you.’ He asked why. I was not yet eight years old. I said, ‘Because when you laugh, you laugh; when you cry, you cry. I haven’t laughed for years and I no longer cry. So who is older?’” (AIPAC Annual Conference)

Continuing His Father’s Legacy

“Five weeks after liberation we celebrated Shavuot — the day the Torah was given to Israel. From Buchenwald we came to Eretz Yisrael. I became a rabbi because my father told my brother: if a miracle happens and you both survive, your younger brother must continue the line. My father was the 37th generation of rabbis; I had to be the 38th. I was chief rabbi of Netanya, then Tel Aviv, and then of the whole State of Israel.” (AIPAC Annual Conference)

“I know this is not just a personal duty but a national one. We must continue the chain, overcome our problems here and in Israel, and live together just as we knew how to die together. Let’s build bridges to remain together. Am Yisrael Chai.”

On Scars That Never Heal

“What shaped me most,” Rabbi Lau says, “is the duty to use time well, because every moment can be the last. Another thing: when my grandchildren reach age eight, I get a pang in my heart. They don’t realize what it means to reach eight. I never believed I would. At seven and a half we arrived in Buchenwald, where people fell like flies — not from violence but from disease, hunger, cold. To reach eight? It’s a celebration.”

On Human Choice in Times of Evil

He tells of Feodor, a noble prisoner in Buchenwald who stole potatoes daily from the Germans to make him soup, knitted him ear protectors from yarn taken from the dead, and checked each night that he was warm before roll call.

The interviewer asked: “You saw people at their lowest and their highest. How could some risk everything for others while some sank to cruelty?” Rabbi Lau answered: “Our sages summed it up in four words: ‘Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is granted.’ Each person chooses. Those who chose the path of Eichmann and Himmler chose that path. Those who chose generosity and nobility — there were many, chose that too. Human choice knows no bounds at either extreme.”

Faith After the Holocaust

“How do you live with this and keep believing?” Rabbi Lau explains: “I cannot grasp Divine providence. You cannot reach into the mind or heart of the Creator to explain or justify. So how do you live? You live with faith that there are things hidden from me, higher than me. It’s not in our hands. I know from the outset I won’t understand them — they are beyond me.”