Heaven-Sent  

It’s a moment of desperation, and there’s no way out — when suddenly, as if Heaven-sent, someone appears.

You may never have met him before, and you may never see him again, but he provides salvation when you need it most.

Eliyahu HaNavi didn’t die. And in every generation, he comes to the rescue of his People in distress. This Yom Tov, when he visits every household, we share a collection of first-person encounters, tales of miraculous intervention by a mysterious figure

Peddling Redemption

As told to Riki Goldstein

by Mr. Zalman Hoff

September 1944. The noose was tightening around the necks of the remaining European Jewish communities. The Nitra yeshivah in Slovakia, the continent’s very last functioning yeshivah, had closed, and as the Gestapo combed the area like bloodhounds sniffing out their prey, the Jews of Nitra scrambled for hiding places.

My parents, Reb Yaakov and Perel Hoff, hid in a cramped underground bunker with their two small children. They accessed the bunker through a hole concealed at the back of a coat closet, and food was provided by a local caretaker in exchange for steady payment.

One Sunday, they heard the caretaker’s wife return from church. She was voluble and excited as she recounted the sermon for her husband.

“The priest said the Jews are suffering for their sins against Christians and the savior, and anyone who helps them will go to hell and suffer the same end!” she said, adding that her conscience had been niggling at her about the Jews they were hiding. “I’m going to the Gestapo,” she concluded.