Survivors During The Holocaust
Essay by 24 • December 9, 2010 • 808 Words (4 Pages) • 1,227 Views
Adolf Hitler attempted to massacre an entire group of people in the "Final Solution"
during the Holocaust. Not only did he strive for genocide, but also his goal was to
abolish the belief and faith that had been practiced and been persecuted in the last
3,000 years. Many Jews that were sent to ghettos and concentration camps lost faith in
God and stopped believing in Him. Others, though, kept the fire of tradition burning
throughout the long night. The survivors of the Holocaust that tried to preserve the
Jewish faith through the hours of darkness have taught people to keep their faith strong
and have everlasting hope.
David Weiss Halivini was a goal oriented, well learned teenager in Romania during the
1930's and 1940's. He hoped to one day become the rabbi of a small village in the
Carpathian Mountains. His dreams were abruptly halted when Germany invaded
Romania in 1942. When David was forced into a ghetto, he continued his Jewish
learning, which included the study of the Torah and Talmud. David ignored the events of
the world around him. Soon after the invasion, David and his entire family were sent to
the Auschwitz concentration camp and his faith was severely put to a test.
When David and his family arrived at Auschwitz, David was separated from his family
and was sent to the Gross-Rosen labor camp to work on a team that cut stones for
building roads. The work was strenuous but he was able to handle it because he had
hope in God. That hope was beginning to fade until David spotted a guard eating a
sandwich wrapped in a bletl, a page from a Jewish religious text. David ran to the guard
and asked for the text and immediately gained his once questioned hope back. That one
page (Paragraph 434 of the laws of Passover) gave the stonecutters of Gross-Rosen
the energy they needed to work everyday. David and the other workers would study that
sheet secretly everyday, because they felt that it would make them closer to God and
that he would someday save them. Once more and more people of the group were
dying and disappearing, David was asked if he still believed that there was a God. He
replied, "Without God, it is even more cruel. God gave man power, and God gave man
his free will." David survived Auschwitz and moved to America in 1947 where he began
his new life. David certainly would not have been able to survive such hardships without
preserving his faith in God.
In contrast to David Halivini, David Bram grew up in Rusiec, Poland as a non-observant
Jew. When the Nazis rounded up the Brams in 1940, David volunteered to work in place
of his father, so that David's father could support the family. When David left his family
at that point, he never saw them again. David was alone in the world and throughout the
entire
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