Why Did Rabbi Adler Feel Free During the Holocaust?

Rabbi Sinai Adler zt"l was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. During the Holocaust, he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and later transferred to Auschwitz. From there, he was moved to the concentration camps of Mauthausen and Gunskirchen. He survived the death march and was liberated with the camp's liberation. After the war, he studied at the "Etz Chaim" yeshiva under Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian, and after about a year, he immigrated to Israel.

Rabbi Adler, a Holocaust survivor who was the Chief Rabbi of Ashdod, writes in his book, "In the Valley of the Shadow: A Year of a Boy's Life in Concentration Camps," about his memories from the Holocaust. He describes the days of Chanukah in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp: "In our barrack, the youth barrack, boys from various occupied countries were gathered, most of them from Central Europe. However, there were also a number of boys from Greece, who were also reached by the murderous occupiers. Among them were observant Jews who were well-versed in Hebrew, so we could communicate in our language. Every day, we would gather in one corner of the barrack for communal prayer, and we even had a shared pair of tefillin, allowing us to fulfill that mitzvah. The communal prayer and the ability to observe mitzvot together under those conditions created tight bonds of friendship among us, the boys who tried to fulfill the mitzvot we could, despite being from distant places.

"When the days of Chanukah arrived, we managed to obtain a single candle, which was of great significance to us. On the first night of Chanukah, we gathered on the top bunk of one of the bunks and lit the beloved candle together. Surely, this lighting kindled new hopes in our hearts for a better future and strengthened our great trust in 'Ma'oz Tzur Yeshuati.' At such a moment, we longed greatly for the past, to the days when we each celebrated Chanukah in our parents' homes with great joy. But that past was gone, and so arose from the depths of our hearts a prayer for a future that, though still distant, would fulfill the prayer we sang even then - 'Establish my house of prayer, and there we will bring thank offerings, at the time of preparing the altar of the barking oppressor, then I will complete with a song, a psalm, the dedication of the altar.'

Entering Passover by Eating Bread

Rabbi Adler writes about his first Passover at the Mauthausen concentration camp: "It was the first Passover I had to spend in a concentration camp. The previous Passover, we were still in the Theresienstadt ghetto, where we could still have the Seder in the family circle. Though even that Seder was celebrated in a unique manner, as at that time there was a strict curfew in the ghetto, and with the onset of darkness, lighting was prohibited, not even lighting a match. Under these circumstances, we had to conduct the Seder before nightfall. But I was still together with my parents, and on our table were some matzot and tea mixed with jam as a substitute for wine. The Seder in Mauthausen was completely different. Initially, I thought of keeping the daily bread ration we received on the eve of Passover until the following morning, to at least avoid eating chametz when the holiday began, but a scholar who was with us pointed out that, according to Jewish law, it was better to eat the bread immediately, as merely possessing it would violate the prohibition of 'no chametz shall be seen or found.' After the roll call held at dusk, and before we entered the barrack for the night, we had some time to wander outside the barracks. I asked one of the boys to walk with me a bit, and as we paced back and forth, we recited from memory passages from the Haggadah, as much as we could remember. An extraordinary Seder night, without matzah and wine, without a festive meal with the whole family gathered around the table, but a walking Seder. Our bodies were humiliated and enslaved, but our spirit could never be enslaved, so we could say even under those conditions – 'We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, but Hashem freed us from there,' because despite everything, we felt truly free."

Where Was Hashem During the Holocaust? Rabbi Zamir Cohen Answers: