The Gloves

At Temple Beth El in Endicott, we didn't always get a minyan right away. There were some Saturday mornings when the sanctuary was empty, except for myself and Rabbi Boros. While we waited, he would sometimes tell me anecdotes from his life...

So! This is the story of the gloves. We were marching... It was winter, towards the end of the War...

We had been in forced labor under the Hungarians, digging trenches along with criminals, gypsies and others. One man I worked with was a convicted murderer. He seemed like a decent person and I told him so. He stopped digging, turned to me and said "Just don't get me angry!" The conditions of forced labor were harsh, and you could never tell how a person would act under such circumstances. There were some, even with university education, who went to cannibalism. If an outsider wandered into their area at night, he was killed on the spot and cut up for food. Even you don't know how you might act under such circumstances, Michael.

Now a long column of us were being marched back from the Front, through the snow, over the mountains. We were coming back from the East under the threat of approaching Russian guns, but we didn't know the facts of the military situation at that time. Sometimes we would sit in ditch on the side of the road, and large shells would explode around us. Some of us had religious upbringing, but now we sat silently.

There were three of us walking together, "Landsmen". We came from the same village in Czechoslovakia. Two of us were helping the third. Stragglers were shot on the spot. We stopped to help our friend Zisha lighten his back-pack. He was complaining of stomach cramps, probably as a result of eating rancid cheese or something. Many of us had been careful to keep to a kosher diet before; now we dug for snails on the side of the road. This is called "pekuach nefesh" - taking extraordinary measures to keep alive.

An SS guard saw the three of us standing there...

"What's going on here?"

"Our friend is feeling a little ill. We're helping him."

"Helping. Very good. That's very good. Now move!"

We started walking, but we had to hold Zisha so that he wouldn't fall over. The guard came again.

"You two walk on ahead" he ordered. Then he walked away.

We stopped to take leave of Zisha. We tried to convince him to lighten his pack, to discard his useless treasures. Then he asked us: "Do either of you have an extra pair of gloves? I don't have gloves and I'm freezing." We could see by his condition that his case was helpless. He probably wouldn't last the day.

Then I remembered something that my father once taught me. My father had been a civil servant, a notary public in our native town in Czechoslovakia. Each morning he spent time reading: Mishna, Mussar, Midrash... and this way he acquired knowledge. This is the right way to acquire knowledge... gradually. Over breakfast, he would summarize for me what he read. Among the lessons he taught me, he taught me that a person should never be left to feel himself hopeless.

I only had one pair of gloves. But if I didn't give Zisha the gloves, his worst fears would be confirmed. I gave him the gloves and put my hands in my pockets. He thanked me.

The guard returned. The two of us walked ahead. Later on, we heard a shot. We didn't see Zisha after that. But I put my hands in my pockets, and somehow I made it..

This is the story as I heard it from Rabbi Dovid Shlomo ben Chaim Menasha Boros, PhD of blessed memory. Chazak ve'Amatz! Be strong and courageous!