That is a very powerful lesson for us to learn. No matter what happens or how hard we may try to appease anti-Semites, to them we will always be Jews who have to be killed, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Instead of courting the anti-Semites, we should cling to our Jewishness and live a life of Torah and mitzvahs, for that is our mission, our goal, and our protection from Hashem.
When the war started in 1939 the Hungarian Gestapo arrested Jewish young men and shipped them off for slave labor. Among them was my grandfather, who together with my great-uncles and many others were cruelly snatched from their homes. Szeged was the city from which these Jewish young men were shipped off.
As one can only imagine, this was a nightmarish time for Hungarian Jewry. Mygreat-grandfather was determined to help these suffering boys. As chief rabbi, he obtained permission to visit them in their detention camps (remember, this was prior to Nazi occupation). He would pretend he was conducting prayer services in Hebrew, interweaving messages from the families of these boys.
One day he called a meeting with all the Jewish doctors of the community. “We have to come up with some type of medication that can simulate infectious illness – but nothing dangerous that could threaten their lives – so that the Hungarians will refrain from taking our boys to the front.”
The doctors came up with the formula, but now there was another problem. How would the boys get it? My Bubba, who was a little girl, was asked if she would be willing to carry these medications, sewn into the pocket of her coat, since the Hungarians would not search a small child. Bubba wholeheartedly agreed to do so.
(To be continued)