Polish sisters reunited, discover they are Jews

Reality

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:35 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

No, we value life. We can't say anyone would be better off dead.

Avodah zarah is one of the big three a Jew is supposed to give up their life for. Catholicism is avodah zarah.

A Jew is supposed to give up their life before converting to Catholicism. I don't judge anyone's choices. Hashem should help that none of us should be in that position. But it's not true to say anyone would be better off dead. It is better for a Jew to die a Jew than to live a life as an oveid ovadah zarah.

Chayalle

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:39 pm

Reality wrote:

But in the case of parents who hid their children with non-Jews, the hope was that they would come back to retrieve them, or that somehow they would be returned to the Jewish people. So it was, in their eyes, a temporary measure to spare their lives for the future.

I don't think these are easy, black and white types of decisions that you or I can judge on. People asked Daas Torah (and were given different answers. Perhaps depending on different situations.) I remember reading in a book about the Bobove Rebbe that a Chassid did not want to hide his child for the reasons you say above, and the Rebbe instructed him to hide his child, and blessed him that he and his wife would survive and come back to get him. They did.

Reality

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:44 pm

Chayalle wrote:

I agree. I'm just saying there is a reason the majority of frum Jews did not place their very young children with non-Jews. They knew even if they survived it would be very hard to get them back. Not everyone was lucky enough to get a bracha from the Bobover Rebbe. Many frum Jews hid their older kids or hid as families.

I was responding to the blanket statement, better alive than dead. That is usually correct except for the big three.

Reality

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:49 pm

People had the most unfathomable choices to make.

I remember a family member telling me all the men in the family went into hiding, leaving the women and children behind. This was early in the war. It never dawned on them that the Nazis would harm the women and children. Traditionally it was only the men who were killed.

Chayalle

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:50 pm

Reality wrote:

I don't know if the majority of frum Jews had the opportunity to hide their kids. It's not like people were lined up to offer that. Many who hid Jewish children did so for monetary gain (and many people were poor) or someone they knew (and not everyone knew someone who would do that.) So I don't know that the decision not to hide their children was a conscious one, but more, one that didn't even come up as a choice.

Also in Poland, the holocaust happened in stages that was over a period of time, but this was not the case in other countries. For example, I know that in the area of Czekoslovakia that my grandmother (she should live to 120) grew up in, it was first taken over by Hungary.....when the Nazis came to deport them, it literally happened in a matter of weeks, without the people being very aware of what was coming. So they never made choices in that regard.

PinkFridge

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:51 pm

Reality wrote:

Thousands of peoples were saved by false papers and outwardly living such a life.
There are people reading this who may be the descendants of children rescued in orphanages by Rabbi Eliezer Silver and Mrs. Sarah Lederman, zt"l, who have raised doros yeshorim.

The rules didn't change in the 21st century but there was something different about this episode of sheb'chol dor v'dor omdim aleinu l'chaloseinu.

Chayalle

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:52 pm

Reality wrote:

Right this was the prevailing thought.

In Hungary, my grandfather was drafted into force-labor units. He had no idea of what was going on back home. He was with an uncle of his who had left behind his wife and young children, and he worried how they managed without him, knowing nothing of their fate till much later. H"YD.

motherfrmisrael

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:53 pm

sequoia wrote:

Um its better than being murdered by Nazis.

Are we now blaming the righteous gentiles who hid Jewish babies at personal risk?

I think people who saved their kids with the help of gentiles are brave, there was no easy answer and we had to save whatever we can with the Nazis chasing us and murdering us. Gentiles who saved Jews were G-d sent, and brave too. I am sure Hashem will repay them.

But we may not forget that in previous generations Jews proudly gave up their lives so that not give up their religious rights, and being Jewish.

Think of Chana and her 7 sons, kids that drowned in the river to not convert to Christianity, the inquisition, the examples are endless.

It is a special power we got from Avrahom avinu and Yitzchak at the Akeida, and we can't forget, also in our generation that YES WE WILL GIVE UP OUR LIVES TO BE JEWISH AND WE TEACH OUR KIDS THE SAME.

Zehava

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:54 pm

Chayalle wrote:

There’s a story about a family who hid their daughter with the maid. The child came to visit and she crossed herself. The family took the child back and she died with them.

Chayalle

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 1:55 pm

PinkFridge wrote:

I have a great-aunt - my grandmother A"H's sister - who was an older teen. Her mother H"YD managed to get her Aryan papers, and she hid in Budapest, posting as a Hungarian Catholic (thanks to her public school education and her fair looks, she pulled it off.)

After the war she married and raised a wonderful frum family, and many frum descendants today.

But during the holocaust, she attended Church every Sunday.....it was a temporary measure to save her life.

Chayalle

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 2:02 pm

Zehava wrote:

There’s a story about a family who hid their daughter with the maid. The child came to visit and she crossed herself. The family took the child back and she died with them.

So sad.
Who can judge the type of choices people had to make back then. Maybe they didn't really believe it would happen to them....some really hoped, to the last minute. Who knows?

Reality

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 2:20 pm

Chayalle wrote:

She was a teenager that's very different from a baby.

There are stories of people after the war going to orphanages and saying shema and saving children like that. But a toddler or younger child is not going to remember anything.

These parents had terrible choices that were really non choices. Plenty of non-Jews took peoples money and turned those same Jews in as soon as they could. They had no idea what the right thing to do and who they could trust. Hashem should help us that we are never in such a position!

iyar

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 2:36 pm

Reality wrote:

Not looking to derail this thread but Catholicism is not considered by all poskim to be avoda zara. It’s considered shittuf (שיתוף) which is not exactly the same thing. If there would ever be a practical reason you’d need to know, it would be good to discuss it with someone who knows the relevant halachos.

Reality

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 3:00 pm

iyar wrote:

I will look into that. I always learned otherwise.

SixOfWands

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 3:24 pm

Reality wrote:

One of the reasons that frum Jews didn't place their children with non-Jews is that there just plain old weren't that many non-Jews willing to take them.

SixOfWands

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 3:26 pm

Zehava wrote:

There’s a story about a family who hid their daughter with the maid. The child came to visit and she crossed herself. The family took the child back and she died with them.

But if that child had not learned to genuflect, she would have been immediately identifiable as a Jew, placing herself and the family at risk.

Reality

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 3:53 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

One of the reasons that frum Jews didn't place their children with non-Jews is that there just plain old weren't that many non-Jews willing to take them.

They also were less likely to have a close friendship with a non-Jew.

sequoia

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 4:01 pm

It’s like asking, “why didn’t they all just go hide out in the woods?”

Because most people follow orders, and because the Holocaust was inconceivable before it happened. Rape, forced labor, military draft, forced conversions — those were all imaginable. Total extermination based on Jewish ethnicity (not religion) — unimaginable.

It is a mistake to believe families didn’t save their kids out of IDEOLOGY — that they knew, or had some idea, of what awaited them, and deliberately chose death for their kids.

Chayalle

Tue, Feb 08 2022, 6:34 pm

sequoia wrote:

It is a mistake to believe families didn’t save their kids out of IDEOLOGY — that they knew, or had some idea, of what awaited them, and deliberately chose death for their kids.

I agree. I think most people hoped that it would pass, that somehow they would be saved. So even if they took their child back, it doesn't mean they made a conscious decision that dying was preferred. It just means they were horrified to see their child adopt non-Jewish actions.