JL;DR
Daily Podcasts Video Research
Holocaust · Leadership

Giving Thanks to God at Auschwitz

Summarizing Armin Rosen in Tablet · Published Wednesday, October 9, 2024
menu_book Read Original bookmark star

JL;DR SUMMARY Rav Nissen Mangel, a Holocaust survivor, attributes his survival to numerous miracles during the Holocaust, including the moldy bread that functioned as a natural antibiotic. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

Jewish Faith  Auschwitz  Jewish Education  Holocaust Survivors  Lubavitcher Rebbe  Holocaust Remembrance  Family Legacy  Miracles  Jewish Resilience  Rav Nissen Mangel 

Places mentioned

Oswiecim, Lesser Poland, Poland
"In the parking lot at Birkenau, under a ribbon of blue horizon squeezed between concrete clouds and a death camp, parents of the several dozen small children on hand realized they now had to explain to those children where they all were."
Krakow, Lesser Poland, Poland
"The walk from Eastern Europes best-preserved medieval cityscape to the plaza of metal chairs coldly memorializing the recent-enough extermination of Krakows Jews takes about 15 minutes."
Kosice, Košice, Slovakia
"from prewar innocence, returning him across the span of nearly his entire lifetime to a world at the cusp of unknown terrors and miracles. Back in Crown Heights, I asked Rav Nissen about what Jewish Kosice had been like."
Bratislava, Slovakia
"He had done well enough to become a generous funder of schools and charitable institutions in Kosicehe also had the cash to buy a villa in Bratislava for his family to flee to when the deportations accelerated."
Lodz, Łódź, Poland
"In century-old row houses within the former ghetto the weight of Jews awaiting death had indented the stairsand so had the weight of people who hadnt known those people, or who knew and didnt care, or who had once cared but grew used to not thinking about them."
Warsaw, Mazovia, Poland
"The trip would include a day in and around Krakow; a visit to the tomb of the Hasidic master Rav Elimelech of Lizhensk, a distant Mangel relative; and a day at Auschwitz, followed by Shabbat in Warsaw."
Mendham, New Jersey, United States
"Ari Herson, the Chabad Hasidic movements young emissary in Mendham and Chester, New Jersey, had told me in Poland, three weeks earlier."
Chester, New Jersey, United States
"Ari Herson, the Chabad Hasidic movements young emissary in Mendham and Chester, New Jersey, had told me in Poland, three weeks earlier."
Crown Heights, New Jersey, United States
"When I visited Rav Nissens Crown Heights home on a Sunday afternoon in the winter of 2023, the earth-colored holy books spilled out of every crawl space, just as one of his grandsons promised me they would."
Morristown, New Jersey, United States
"Hes got a 20-year plan, but hes 90, Mendel Mendy Herson, the associate dean of the Chabad rabbinical college in Morristownthe movements key training groundand the son-in-law of Rav Nissen, told me in Krakow."
Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
"Other concerns were less existential: No one could know what it would really, actually be like for everyone to travel to Auschwitz with Rav Nissen, who had followed the rebbes advice to share stories of his survival with the public but did not often volunteer them around his family. Rav Nissen told me he did not discuss his Holocaust experiences with the rebbe: Our relationship was on more of a spiritual level, a Toyrah level, he said. We heard the stories growing up, somewhat, Malkie Herson told me late one night in Krakow."
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
"Auschwitz, followed by Shabbat in Warsaw. Large gatherings of Mangels werent so unusualthere was always another simcha on the way, another wedding or holiday that could get several dozen of them in the same place at once, in family strongholds like Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or Cherry Grove or Crown Heights."
Cherry Grove, Ohio, United States
"Auschwitz, followed by Shabbat in Warsaw. Large gatherings of Mangels werent so unusualthere was always another simcha on the way, another wedding or holiday that could get several dozen of them in the same place at once, in family strongholds like Pittsburgh or Cincinnati or Cherry Grove or Crown Heights."
Jerusalem, Israel
"The final period before the Nazis murdered nearly everyone who spoke with the polyglot Yiddish accent of Kosice, Slovakia, was an era of overwhelming danger and possibility for Europes Jews, one where New York, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Berlin, Vilna, and Jerusalem all offered competing visions of the future."

Support this source

attach_money Donate to Tablet
This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 58111
Cairo Source ID 10
Retrieved 2025-07-30 05:32:50 UTC
Curated 2025-07-30 19:03:58 UTC