El rabino Herschel Schacter, quien participó en la liberación de Buchenwald rescatando, entre muchos otros, a Israel Lau, rabino mayor de Israel y Tel Aviv murió a los 95 años el pasado 21 de marzo, 2013.
Por considerarlo de especial interés para la memoria histórica, reproducimos este comentario publicado por el períodico New York Times.
Fotografía cortesía de Yad Vashem. Enviada por Dr. Alberto Warman.
Era 11 de abril 1945 y el Tercer Cuerpo del general George S. Patton se había liberado del campo de concentración apenas una hora antes. Rabino Schacter, que se adjuntó al Tercer Cuerpo del Ejército VIII, fue el primer capellán judío en entrar.
Esa mañana después de enterarse de que los tanques de avance de Patton había llegado al campo, el rabino Schacter, que murió en la sección de Riverdale del Bronx el jueves, después de una carrera como uno de los más prominentes rabinos modernos ortodoxos en los Estados Unidos, se apoderó de un jeep y su conductor. Salió de la sede y corrió hacia Buchenwald.
Al caer la tarde, cuando el rabino pasó a través de las puertas, los tanques aliados habían roto el campamento. Recordó, dijo más tarde, el escozor del humo en los ojos, el olor de la carne quemada y los cientos de cuerpos esparcidos por todas partes.
Él permanecería en Buchenwald durante meses, con el propósito de ayudar a los sobrevivientes, de ofrecer servicios religiosos en una sala de recreación de los nazis y finalmente, ayudar a regresar a miles de Judios.
Por su trabajo, el rabino Schacter fue señalado por su nombre por Yisrael Meir Lau, el ex jefe rabino ashkenazi de Israel, en una reunión con el presidente Obama en Yad Vashem, memorial del Holocausto de Israel.
En Buchenwald aquel día de abril, el rabino dijo después, que parecía que no había nadie con vida. En el campo, se encontró con un joven teniente norteamericano y le preguntó: ¿Hay algunos Judíos vivos aquí?.
Fue llevado al Lager Kleine o Campo Pequeño, un campo más pequeño dentro del más grande. Allí, en el cuartel sucio, hombres yacían sobre tablones de madera desde el suelo hasta el techo. Se quedaron mirando al rabino, con su uniforme militar desconocido, con una sensación de miedo inconfundible.
“Shalom Aleijem, Yidden”, exclamó el rabino Schacter en yiddish, “ihr Zint frei!” – “La paz sea con vosotros, Judío, eres libre!” Corrió de cuartel en cuartel, repitiendo esas palabras. Se le unieron los Judíos que podía caminar, hasta que una corriente de gente se congregó a sus espaldas.
Al pasar por un montón de cadáveres, el rabino Schacter vio un destello de movimiento. Al acercarse, vio a un niño pequeño, Prisionero 17030, escondiéndose detrás de terror en el montículo.
“Tenía miedo de él,” el niño recordaría mucho después, en una entrevista con The New York Times. “Yo sabía que todos los uniformes de las SS y la Gestapo y la Wehrmacht, y de repente, un nuevo tipo de uniforme. Yo pensé, Un nuevo tipo de enemigo. “
Con lágrimas corriendo por su rostro, el rabino Schacter tomó al muchacho. “¿Cómo te llamas, hijo mío?”, Se preguntó en yiddish.
Lulek, respondió el niño.
¿Cuántos años tienes?, preguntó el rabino.
¿Qué diferencia hace? Lulek, que tenía 7 años, dijo. Yo soy mayor que tú, de todos modos.
¿Por qué te crees que eres mayor, le preguntó el rabino Schacter, sonriendo.
Porque llorar y reír como un niño, respondió Lulek. No me he reído en mucho tiempo, y ya ni siquiera soy capaz de llorar más. Así que por eso soy mayor.
El rabino Schacter descubrió casi mil niños huérfanos en Buchenwald. Él y un colega, el Rabino Robert Marcus, ayudó a organizar su transporte a Francia – un convoy que incluía Lulek y el adolescente Elie Wiesel -, así como a Suiza, un grupo personalmente guiado por el rabino Schacter y a Palestina.
Durante décadas, el rabino dijo Schacter, permaneció atormentado por su estancia en Buchenwald, y por las preguntas que los sobrevivientes le hicieron mientras corría por el campamento el primer día.
Ellos me preguntaban una y otra vez: ¿El mundo sabe lo que nos pasó? El rabino Schacter dijo a The Associated Press en 1981. Yo pensaba: Si mi padre no hubiera cogido el barco a tiempo, hubiera estado allí, también.
Schacter Herschel nació en la sección Brownsville de Brooklyn el 10 de octubre de 1917, era el menor de 10 hijos de padres que habían venido de Polonia. Su padre, Pincus, era un shochet séptima generación, matarife ritual, y su madre, la ex schimmelman, Miriam, era gerente inmobiliario.
*La foto que acompaña este comentario, muestra al rabino en el momento de realizar un servicio a los sobrevivientes del Campo de Buchenwald en abril de 1945.
Documental sobre el Campo de Buchenwald, parte 1.
Documental sobre el Campo de Buchenwald, parte 2.
Acerca del rabino Herschel Schacter
Wikipedia
Herschel Schacter (October 10, 1917 – March 21, 2013) was a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and a prominent student of Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik.
Schacter was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn and the youngest of 10 children. His parents came from Poland. His father, Pincus, was a seventh-generation shochet, or ritual slaughterer; his mother, the former Miriam Schimmelman, was a real estate manager.
Schacter earned a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University in New York in 1938 and Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in 1941. He spent about a year as a pulpit rabbi in Stamford, Connecticut before enlisting in the Army in 1942.
During World War II, he was a chaplain in the Third Army’s VIII Corps. and was the first US Army Chaplain to enter and participate in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11 1945, barely an hour after it had been liberated by Gen. George Patton’s troops. Rabbi Schacter remained at Buchenwald for months, tending to survivors and leading religious services. One of the children who he personally rescued from the camp was then 7-year old Yisrael Meir Lau, who grew up to become the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Later he aided in the resettlement of displaced persons, one of whom was teenaged Elie Wiesel, one of some thousand Jewish orphans liberated that day. He was discharged from the Army with the rank of captain.
Schacter was the Rabbi of the Mosholu Jewish Center in the Bronx from 1947 till it closed in 1999.
In 1956, he went to the Soviet Union with an American rabbinic delegation as advocate for the rights of Soviet Jews and an adviser on the subject to President Richard M. Nixon.
Schacter lived in the Riverdale, Bronx and died March 21, 2013. He was 95 and is survived by his wife, the former Pnina Gewirtz, whom he married in 1948; a son, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, the former director of the Soloveitchik Institute; a daughter, Miriam Schacter; four grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
Rabbi Herschel Schacter leading the Shavuot prayer service for survivors in the Buchenwald camp in Germany in 1945.
By MARGALIT FOX
The smoke was still rising as Rabbi Herschel Schacter rode through the gates of Buchenwald.
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Librado Romero/The New York Times
Rabbi Herschel Schacter in 1999.
It was April 11, 1945, and Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army had liberated the concentration camp scarcely an hour before. Rabbi Schacter, who was attached to the Third Army’s VIII Corps, was the first Jewish chaplain to enter in its wake.
That morning, after learning that Patton’s forward tanks had arrived at the camp, Rabbi Schacter, who died in the Riverdale section of the Bronx on Thursday at 95 after a career as one of the most prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States, commandeered a jeep and driver. He left headquarters and sped toward Buchenwald.
By late afternoon, when the rabbi drove through the gates, Allied tanks had breached the camp. He remembered, he later said, the sting of smoke in his eyes, the smell of burning flesh and the hundreds of bodies strewn everywhere.
He would remain at Buchenwald for months, tending to survivors, leading religious services in a former Nazi recreation hall and eventually helping to resettle thousands of Jews.
For his work, Rabbi Schacter was singled out by name on Friday by Yisrael Meir Lau, the former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, in a meeting with President Obama at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
In Buchenwald that April day, Rabbi Schacter said afterward, it seemed as though there was no one left alive. In the camp, he encountered a young American lieutenant who knew his way around.
“Are there any Jews alive here?” the rabbi asked him.
He was led to the Kleine Lager, or Little Camp, a smaller camp within the larger one. There, in filthy barracks, men lay on raw wooden planks stacked from floor to ceiling. They stared down at the rabbi, in his unfamiliar military uniform, with unmistakable fright.
“Shalom Aleichem, Yidden,” Rabbi Schacter cried in Yiddish, “ihr zint frei!” — “Peace be upon you, Jews, you are free!” He ran from barracks to barracks, repeating those words. He was joined by those Jews who could walk, until a stream of people swelled behind him.
As he passed a mound of corpses, Rabbi Schacter spied a flicker of movement. Drawing closer, he saw a small boy, Prisoner 17030, hiding in terror behind the mound.
“I was afraid of him,” the child would recall long afterward in an interview with The New York Times. “I knew all the uniforms of SS and Gestapo and Wehrmacht, and all of a sudden, a new kind of uniform. I thought, ‘A new kind of enemy.’ “
With tears streaming down his face, Rabbi Schacter picked the boy up. “What’s your name, my child?” he asked in Yiddish.
“Lulek,” the child replied.
“How old are you?” the rabbi asked.
“What difference does it make?” Lulek, who was 7, said. “I’m older than you, anyway.”
“Why do you think you’re older?” Rabbi Schacter asked, smiling.
“Because you cry and laugh like a child,” Lulek replied. “I haven’t laughed in a long time, and I don’t even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?”
Rabbi Schacter discovered nearly a thousand orphaned children in Buchenwald. He and a colleague, Rabbi Robert Marcus, helped arrange for their transport to France — a convoy that included Lulek and the teenage Elie Wiesel — as well as to Switzerland, a group personally conveyed by Rabbi Schacter, and to Palestine.
For decades afterward, Rabbi Schacter said, he remained haunted by his time in Buchenwald, and by the question survivors put to him as he raced through the camp that first day.
“They were asking me, over and over, ‘Does the world know what happened to us?’ ” Rabbi Schacter told The Associated Press in 1981. “And I was thinking, ‘If my own father had not caught the boat on time, I would have been there, too.’ “
Herschel Schacter was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Oct. 10, 1917, the youngest of 10 children of parents who had come from Poland. His father, Pincus, was a seventh-generation shochet, or ritual slaughterer; his mother, the former Miriam Schimmelman, was a real estate manager.
Mr. Schacter earned a bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University in New York in 1938; in 1941, he received ordination at Yeshiva from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, a founder of the Modern Orthodox movement.
He spent about a year as a pulpit rabbi in Stamford, Conn., before enlisting in the Army as a chaplain in 1942.
After Buchenwald was liberated, he spent every day there distributing matzo (liberation had come just a week after Passover); leading services for Shavuot, which celebrates the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai, and which fell that year in May; and conducting Friday night services.
At one of those services, Lulek and his older brother, Naftali, were able to say Kaddish for their parents, Polish Jews who had been killed by the Nazis.
Discharged from the Army with the rank of captain, Rabbi Schacter became the spiritual leader of the Mosholu Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue on Hull Avenue in the north Bronx. He presided there from 1947 until it closed in 1999.
He was a leader of many national Jewish groups, including the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, of which he was a past chairman. He was most recently the director of rabbinic services at Yeshiva.
Rabbi Schacter, who in 1956 went to the Soviet Union with an American rabbinic delegation, was an outspoken advocate for the rights of Soviet Jews and an adviser on the subject to President Richard M. Nixon.
A resident of the Riverdale section of the Bronx, Rabbi Schacter is survived by his wife, the former Pnina Gewirtz, whom he married in 1948; a son, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter, who confirmed his father’s death; a daughter, Miriam Schacter; four grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.
And what of Lulek, the orphan Rabbi Schacter rescued from Buchenwald that day? Lulek, who eventually settled in Palestine, grew up to be Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau.
Rabbi Lau, who recounted his childhood exchange with Rabbi Schacter in a memoir, published in English in 2011 as “Out of the Depths,” was the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003 and is now the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.
On Friday, when Rabbi Lau told Mr. Obama of his rescue by Rabbi Schacter — he thanked the American people for delivering Buchenwald survivors “not from slavery to freedom, but from death to life” — he had not yet learned of Rabbi Schacter’s death the day before.
“For me, he was alive,” Rabbi Lau said in an interview with The Times on Monday. “I speak about him with tears in my eyes.”
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