To Me, He’s Alive  

On Simchas Torah 2023, as the illusion of control was shattered and Jews all over began to reconnect with their core identity, Hashem drew me into the saga as well, allowing me to stand alongside survivors and hostage families in their darkest hours.

Two years later, with the release of the remaining hostages, many of their stories have since had a happy ending, while others have had tragic closure. Either way, it’s my privilege to continue to share the journeys of these families with you.

I was invited to speak at one of the many Shabbos gatherings for hostage families because of my work as a Holocaust guide. “You’ve met so many survivors,” Rabbanit Tzila Schneider, head of Kesher Yehudi and organizer of these special shabbatons, said to me. “You’ve led a hundred tours of Auschwitz. Tell them that Am Yisrael has been through worse — and yet, here we are.”

But over the course of that Shabbos, through my conversations with the families, I came to realize that this was a terrible mistake.

I met fathers and mothers losing their minds from worry — they hadn’t eaten or slept for months. The fear for their sons — and to an even greater degree, for their daughters — was driving them to the brink.

Many people get angry when I say this: “You have no idea what Auschwitz was like,” they tell me. But the truth is, I do have some idea what Auschwitz was like — and I also have some idea of what it’s like to be the parent of a hostage. I’m not saying we’re all living through another Holocaust. But these parents? They’d choose the Holocaust over the nightmare they’re living through right now.