Song for Heaven,Huddled in a narrow bunk, surrounded by his fellow prisoners in the Nazi death camp, Chazzan Herschel Fink of Antwerp began intoning the awe-inspiring words of Kol Nidrei. Even when the door burst open and he found himself facing the malevolent gaze of a senior Nazi officer, he continued singing. Over half a century later, he tells the story of his personal rescue on that fateful night.
Dressed in identical striped prison uniforms trembling like leaves in the freezing cold of the European night hundreds of Jewish prisoners return for yet another night of death in Auschwitz. Their cheeks are sunken their stomachs bloated from hunger and thirst the spark in their eyes dimmed. Hope has long since stopped beating in their hearts.
One Jewish prisoner Herschel Fink cannot forget the date.
“It’s Erev Yom Kippur today” he reflects as he recalls that only one year earlier he’d sat amidst his beloved family bedecked in pristine white garments preparing for the awe-inspiring day. “We can’t allow Yom Kippur to pass without experiencing some of its holiness something that will restore the tzelem Elokim to our bodies and souls something to remind us that we are not like them.”
Young Herschel spends the entire day developing a plan. It was unlikely that most would fast since every morsel of food that the Jewish inmates certainly fell into the category of pikuach nefesh. Indeed the intimidating message of Unesaneh Tokef — “Who in hunger and who in thirst … who in strangling and who in stoning” — was being fulfilled each day. But at least they could recall the special day.
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