Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Adapted from, Breaking the Tablets: Jewish Theology after the Shoah, by Rabbi David Weiss-Halivni

I was in the forced labor camp at Wolfsberg, one of the camps of Gross-Rosen from May 1944 until February 1945. In the camp, we were given a day off every second Sunday, during which we could remain in the camp and, ostensibly, tend to our own needs. But, since the SS were looking for “volunteers,” for work outside the camp and such “volunteering” consumed the entire day in hard labor, whoever could, would hide from them.

On Sundays, unlike regular days of work, the SS did not call names according to their lists but would seize people as they found them. Whoever was not caught this way was able to avoid the claws of the SS. But, when there was a shortage of workers, the SS went searching, and whoever was caught could anticipate a whipping, if not more. One time I was among those caught. I was hiding under the bed, and an SS trooper entered the room. The room was supposed to be empty, but, like a dog, he smelled the scent of flesh. When he raised his whip, I pleaded with in him in German, and I began saying, “Herr Ubsersturmfuher, Merciful One (HaRachamim).” And I escaped by the skin of my teeth.

I cannot judge how much this supplication helped me stay alive and not collapse under the lashing. But every day I grieve for having used this holy word, “Merciful One” (HaRachamim)—which appears in the sources only in relation to the Holy One—to pray for mercy from this villain. I simply knew no other words of entreaty. I drew them from the prayer book and translated them into German.  Perhaps, subconsciously, I thought of the SS, as it were, as God. They ruled over the camp with absolute authority, life and death—literally remained in their hands, and I unconsciously used an expression appropriate to God.

May it be Your will that, by virtue of my having understood the correct meaning of the prayer, meloch al kol haolam kulo bekh’vodecha, “Rule over all the world in Your full glory,” that all the world comes to eradicate the condition that ruled in the forced labor camp. May it be Your will to repair the damage I caused by substituting the profane for the Holy. And may we be worthy of beholding the fulfillment of the prayer, “And His dominion rules over all.”

Out of the depths I call to you, LORD (Psa. 130:1)