Their Story Is Our Story

Coordinated by Michal Frischman

These days, you don’t have to look too far to find a reason to mourn the galus, and yet for most of us, connecting to the true anguish of the Churban doesn’t always come easily. While we allow the haunting tones of Eichah to penetrate, wishing we could better connect, we find ourselves turning to the voices that are closer and more relatable — those of the cherished, dwindling few who survived a churban of their own. With their words, we can, for one day, reconnect to the horror and despair of previous generations.

If Tishah B’Av is still a day of mourning this year, is there a Holocaust memoir that will help you tune in?

Pearls to Hold on to

Ariella Schiller

Title: To Vanquish the Dragon

Author: Pearl Benisch  

Publisher: Feldheim Publishers

When you first read it: At age 17

Scene that hit you the hardest: When Pearl’s friend, Frydzia, is led away from the barracks.

Just as that sunrise was young and full of enthusiasm, so were we. Fighting the darkness of the world with the light of Torah.

Hoping for the great day of peace, when hate and bigotry would turn to love. Waiting for a new day to emerge from the darkness. Trusting that the awareness of G-d would embrace the entire world and wrap it in His eternal light.

(Pearl Benisch, To Vanquish the Dragon)

IT was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In other words, it was the harrowing throes of high school. Every moment, every interaction, felt so enormous, taking on giant proportions. Every interaction held meaning and weight, every day stretched to eternity, and simple things like friendships and wardrobes took center stage in my psyche.

And the drama. Ohhhhh, the drama.

And in the midst of this roller coaster of angst and identity crises and overwhelming emotions, we began to study the book To Vanquish the Dragon, by Pearl Benisch (Feldheim Publishers).

I knew about the Holocaust, I devoured books for breakfast, and as an old soul surrounded by adults, I overheard snatches and figments and anecdotes and pieced together the truth about The War. But I’d never sat at a desk, while someone taught me, as an equal Jewish adult, about the genocide of our people.

And there I was, 17 years old in Bais Yaakov, eyes wide, heart open, as Morah Flam walked us through the harrowing journey of teenage Pearl and her friends and teachers from the Bais Yaakov in Krakow. We learned it together, chapter by chapter. And it was a lot. But having it given over in the safety of a classroom, surrounded by friends, made experiencing Pearl’s story a rite of passage.

And in true teenage fashion, I realized that I had never connected to anything in my life quite like I connected to the young blonde talmidah of Sarah Schenirer. Stories of the Holocaust and war had always seemed so foreign. It was them, taking place over there, and sensitive soul that I am, I could cry, I could feel their pain, but it was never mine.

Through the lens of Pearl’s trials and tribulations, I began to understand. There was no her and me, no then and now. It was all one circle of existing, resilience, and emunah.

My notebooks full of angst-filled poems stilled as I read her poems on experiences no youth should have ever had to pen:

No angel came the sword to stop
No tangled ram was found to swap
The thousands of humans bound atop the pyre
Ready to go up
In fire

I began to view my own life differently. And I made changes. Big changes, life-altering ones. I began to grow on a trajectory that I view until today as a gift from Hashem. It was like He lifted me and helped me be the best version of myself, when maybe I didn’t possess the necessary tools to do so. I lost friendships, those scared or annoyed by my sudden growth, but I gained insights, made new friends, and on one bright winter day, Mrs. Pearl Benisch herself, author of To Vanquish the Dragon and Carry Me in Your Heart, came to Bais Yaakov to speak to us.

Sitting in the auditorium, watching the tiny, elegant blonde woman walk up to the podium, I knew something was about to happen. Something concrete was going to change.

She looked around at us, with genuine emotion and overwhelm.

“After the war, Bais Yaakov was a desert,” she said in her elegantly accented English. “We were girls without parents, without leaders. So wherever we ended up, we started a Bais Yaakov. And look at you today. Look what I am zocheh to witness.”

She stopped, overcome with emotion at the scene of one hundred Bais Yaakov girls looking back up at her.

And that’s when all the dots at long last connected. The Bais Yaakov movement Frau Schenirer had started with a small group of earnest talmidos, the efforts of pure evil to eradicate it all, the audacity of weakened, starving young girls to dare to rebuild it all from scratch… it all led up to me.

To this moment. Here. today. In my uniform, in the new millennia. It all led to this.

And when we gathered in the center of the room, joined hands, and sang the same tune Sarah Schenirer sang with her students

V’taher libeinu… l’avdecha b’emes…..

I knew, right then, it would be a moment I would forever carry in my heart.