(If you’d like to read past posts, please check out our home page.) ~ Pat
Years ago I met a man named Ezra who described to me a nightingale that sang to him during a very dark period in his life. Here’s his story.
I met Ezra at a bar mitzvah where Marsha and I were seated next to him and his wife at dinner. He was well past eighty, with a thin, taut face and a ferociously sharp mind capable of remembering his earlier life in rich detail. It turned out, among other things, Ezra was a Holocaust survivor. In no time we were engrossed in conversation. He shared with me how, as a teenager, he escaped from Nazi Germany by going on the run, first through France, then Italy, and then back to France where he was captured and sent to a concentration camp in Poland.
As Ezra shared his story, it dawned on me this was the was first Holocaust survivor I’d ever spoken with. I vividly remembered in 1960 watching the televised trial of Adolph Eichmann, the mastermind of the “final solution.” Dad, a World War II veteran, insisted we watch so that we would understand the horrors that precipitated the war. As a 12-year-old I was thunderstruck. It didn’t seem possible anyone would call for the extermination of 6 million human beings and yet, there sat Eichmann, behind a screen, with a look of utter disinterest. I came to see what someone is capable of when the dictates of conscience and morality are cast aside. Eichmann assumed no personal responsibility for the genocide for which he was so clearly responsible. He was convicted, sentenced to death and hanged.
So it felt like an honor to speak with an actual Holocaust survivor. As Ezra continued his story he recounted how his every waking moment was focused on survival. He remembered the smallest details of his life in the camp:
- How the bunks were constructed
- The material for his clothing
- The shape of the morsels of food in the gruel they were fed
- His dreams, conversations and thoughts
Then he shared with me how he survived the long, agonizing nights. He said he imagined a nightingale singing a Shabbat blessing to him. And then, over time, he came to sing along with the nightingale, and soon the song became a source of solace and strength for him. The blessing came from the sixth chapter of the Book of Numbers.
“May God Bless you and guard you. May the light of God shine upon you, and may God be gracious to you. May the presence of God be with you and give you peace.”
Ezra said that after his liberation he continued singing this blessing each night for the rest of his life.
There is much I can say about this remarkable conversation with this most remarkable man, but the great learning I took away was about faith. Ezra had found a way to sustain himself in the darkest time imaginable. Surely we can find a way to do the same. May we each discover our nightingale and sing with it our own blessing.
Just a thought…
Pat
Copyright © 2020 Patrick J. Moriarty. All Rights Reserved.
Would you like to submit a post to Just A Thought? To learn more, please click here.