We’re With You,Jews around the world were devastated by the enormity of the tragedy: an entire family — three generations — taken in an instant in a gruesome collision between a train and a minibus that stalled. Son-in-law David Tzvi Gutstein, the only surviving family member, together with the driver, were somehow spared the fate of the others, despite the van being thrown 1,300 feet after it had been flattened. In a painful conversation from his hospital bed, David Tzvi (“Dutzi”) shares his overwhelming devastation.
An opaque curtain separates us three close friends of David Tzvi (“Dutzi”) Gutstein who was up till now an energetic vibrant avreich. And now? A young widower and bereaved father who not only lost his wife and son but also his parents-in-law and all their children in the most horrendous tragedy to have hit the chareidi community for decades. Gutstein is the only survivor — injured but alive.
We took one step forward and retreated three. The doctors standing in the doorway urged us pleaded with us to muster our courage and enter. “It’s important for the patient. He needs friends and their moral support.”
It didn’t help. We just couldn’t bear to see our comrade lying there helpless grappling with the terrible reality of seven horrible deaths one more tragic than the next. We didn’t have the strength to look into his eyes and see the black death reflected in them when only three days before he had sat together with us in a daily Gemara shiur. And now the cup of bitterness had been overturned upon him soaking him to its last poisonous drop.
How could we approach him? What could we possibly say? Maybe we should go back to the car?
Create a free account to keep reading.
