Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker
Chaskel Tydor was imprisoned in Buchenwald in 1939 and was sent to Auschwitz III in October 1942. As an older prisoner with experience in the camps, he was designated a block secretary, responsible for assigning work details. Around Rosh Hashanah, 1944, he arranged to send a group of religious prisoners on a work detail apart from others so they could pray as a minyan. When they returned, he learned that they had sounded a shofar.
Mr. Tydor didn’t know how it was smuggled in. He never saw it until January 1945, when the Germans abandoned Auschwitz and forced the survivors on a 30-mile march. Another prisoner came up to him and pressed the shofar, wrapped in a rag, into his hand. “I’m going to die on this march. If you live, take this shofar. Tell them we blew the shofar at Auschwitz.”
Mr. Tydor survived the march and was liberated by the American Army on April 11, 1945. Later that year, he made it to the Land of Israel and off the coast of Haifa on Rosh Hashanah 1945, he blew the shofar. Original Story Here.
We blow the shofar to realize what we often forget – we are not the center of the universe. The shofar brings humility and appreciation of all that’s beyond our control. And in spite of it all, they blew shofar at Auschwitz. That reminds us that as powerless as we can feel, we choose how to live.
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