Throughout history, Jews have celebrated Passover during perilous times, including during the Holocaust. There are countless heartbreaking stories of how Jews endeavored against all odds to celebrate Passover during the Shoah, whether in hiding, in the ghettos, or in concentration camps, and Jewish observance of the holiday in the face of the ever-present threat of murder by the Nazis was at once tragic and inspirational. One way to remember our Jewish history – including particularly the Biblical and Haggadic command “And You Shall Tell Your Children” – is through photos, artifacts, and personal testimonies, which facilitate the exploration and exploration of the ways Passover was observed throughout Europe during and prior to the Holocaust years. In that regard, I share here some Holocaust-related Passover items from my collection.
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In this March 31, 1934 Passover sermon in which Chief Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz issues a moral challenge to British Jewry, he expounds on the theme expressed in the Ha Lachma Anya (“this is the bread of affliction”) on the eve of the Holocaust:
Rav Hertz’s Passover sermon (1934)
Alas, it is no longer necessary to travel to far-off ages, or out-of-the-way lands, to find a Jewry whose agony and martyrdom bring out the full meaning of hashta avdei, “this year we are bondmen.” The unbelievable has come to pass. Only fourteen months ago, German Jewry was on the heights – illustrious through its achievement in every walk of life, strong in religious endeavor, and rich in worldly blessings. Today, it is hurled down from its eminence; facing misery, insult and degradation; and sinking in deep waters of intolerance and hate . . .
The tragedy that confronts us today is so heartbreaking that it can dispense with exaggeration. Several spokesmen of Anglo-Jewry have referred to it as the greatest calamity that has befallen Jews and Judaism since the destruction of the Temple, and declare it to be without parallel in the annals of Israel . . .
But whatever the future may or may not have in store for us, the terrible plight of our German brethren is a moral challenge to the Jews of Great and Greater Britain. This is a time neither for denunciation nor lamentation, but for action. Lamentation would be in complete disharmony with the spirit of Passover . . . Of immeasurably greater importance is the sacred resolve to render the sufferers practical help, to find the wherewithal for salvaging the victims of this new tyranny, whether the victims remain under the Swastika or emigrate to start life anew in the Holy Land or in other lands of freedom.
The Second Appeal of the Central British Fund for German Jewry has been launched on the eve of Passover. Large funds are required if we are to save the refugees from hunger and want. Moreover, the religious structure of the German communities – the great fabric of Jewish knowledge and culture built up by a long succession of saints and scholars – is in danger of collapsing. That would be the crowning disaster . . .bring hope and strength to those without hope and strength and strive to lend fulfillment to the age-long prayer, “Next year may we all be free men!”
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According to a well-established World War II military tradition, which Jewish servicemen were delighted to follow, Jewish soldiers were expected to surrender their privileges to their Christian comrades, including much-valued weekend passes, so that they could celebrate Christmas and Easter. This custom also applied to Christian soldiers, who were expected to serve in place of their Jewish compatriots who were furloughed to celebrate the Yomim Noraim and Passover. However, the burden of this arrangement obviously fell far more heavily on the Jewish soldiers and staff, whose numbers constituted only a very small percentage of the aggregate U.S. armed forces.
The antisemitic Henry Stimson approves Passover furloughs (April 11, 1941).
Perhaps even more than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jewish soldiers who had exhibited no interest in attending Jewish services throughout the year eagerly sought furloughs for Passover so that they could attend a Seder. Many young Jewish soldiers who were away from home for the first time found that attending a Seder provided an important emotional link to familiar traditions of home and family.
The Jewish Welfare Board played a particularly important role in facilitating Passover observance by, among other things, organizing Sedarim for Jewish soldiers. In the United States alone, over 100,000 Jewish servicemen were guests at over 300 Sedarim, with thousands of others invited to private homes to share a Seder with a family. One can only imagine how intensely meaningful and joyous it must have been for Seder hosts during World War II to recite from their Haggadot “Kol dichfin yeitei v’yeichul; kol ditzrich yeitei v’yifsach” (“whoever is hungry, come and eat; whoever is needy, let him come and share in the Pascal sacrifice”) with an American soldier, a complete stranger fighting for them against the Nazis, sitting at their table. In other instances, the enthusiasm of Orthodox soldiers at being able to participate in a Seder inspired their non-observant hosts to rediscover their Jewish traditions and to become more interested and knowledgeable about Judaism.
Throughout the war, the JWB also made a monumental contribution in addressing one of the great challenges in enabling Passover observance by American troops: locating Passover supplies, including specific foods required for the Seder, most prominently kosher wine and matzah. The JWB was instrumental not only in locating such supplies, but also in distributing them to the troops – including some fifty tons of matzah sent to overseas troops in 1945.
Many military commanders sought to accommodate their Jewish troops to the greatest possible extent but, in many instances, it was simply impossible, given wartime limitations. In American Jewish History: A Primary Source Reader (2014), Gary Zola and Marc Dollinger note that “overseas, the cooperation of the War Department and the Chaplain Corps made it possible for almost any Jewish soldier to observe Passover.” Thus, in this April 11, 1941 correspondence on War Department letterhead, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson writes to Rabbi Louis Wolsey about granting furloughs to Jewish soldiers for Passover:
Receipt is acknowledged of your letter of April 9, 1941, with reference to the Jewish boys at Indian Gap, Pennsylvania, being granted a furlough for the Passover holiday.
Instructions have been issued to the effect that furloughs may be granted to members of the Jewish faith for such time as is necessary to allow them to be at their homes, when practicable, or at places where Seder celebrations are held, from noon of Friday, April 11, 1941, until midnight of Sunday, April 13, 1941, provided no interference with the public service is occasioned thereby.
The actual granting of furlough is a matter coming within the jurisdiction of local commanders, but you may be assured that all requests will be carefully considered and as many as practicable will be approved.
Fort Indiantown Gap was first established by Pennsylvania in 1931 as the primary training base for the Pennsylvania National Guard. At the beginning of World War II, the state leased the land to the U.S. Army for a training base, and more than 150,000 troops in eight divisions – including, apparently, several Jewish servicemen – received intense military training there before being shipped out to fight overseas.
While blatant antisemitism offended Stimson’s conservative sensibilities, and he did not belong to any of the antisemitic groups active in the United States, he was no friend of the Jews. He repeatedly urged FDR not to let Jewish war refugees into the United States and he opposed efforts to persuade the British to lift their restrictions on immigration to Eretz Yisrael. He was vehemently opposed to the creation of Israel, played a decisive role in dissuading Congress from voting for a Jewish Palestine, and viewed a Jewish State as a threat to American interests in the Middle East. He played a key role in FDR’s decision not to disrupt the mass extermination of the Jews by bombing the deportation railways leading to Auschwitz.
When Harry Truman was elected president, Stimson warned him about the “danger” of American Jews interfering with American post-war German policy. Concerned that an extended de-Nazification program could drive Germany into the Soviet camp in the new “cold war,” he opposed punishing Germans for their Holocaust crimes. He also refused to accompany Truman to the Potsdam Conference (1945), where the victorious Allied leaders met to decide how to administer the defeated Nazi Germany, unless the president promised that neither Henry Morgenthau – whom Stimson believed was “dangerous” because he was “biased by his antisemitic grievances” – nor Bernard Baruch, nor any other Jew would be a part of the American delegation. He wrote in his diary that “the objective of punishment is prevention, not vengeance . . . reason why Jew is disqualified,” and Truman apparently agreed: no Jew served on the American Potsdam delegation.
Stimson (1867 – 1950) was an American statesman, lawyer, and Republican Party politician and spokesman on foreign policy who twice served as Secretary of War, first under Republican William Howard Taft and later under Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which capacity he was a leading hawk calling for war against Germany. During World War II, he took charge of raising and training 13 million soldiers and airmen, supervised the spending of a third of the nation’s GDP on the Army and the Air Forces, helped formulate military strategy, and took personal control of building and using the atomic bomb. He served as Governor-General of the Philippines, and, as Secretary of State under Republican President Herbert Hoover (1929 – 33), he articulated the so-called “Stimson Doctrine,” which announced American opposition to Japanese expansion in Asia. A lifelong supporter of pragmatic idealism and nonpartisan internationalism in American foreign policy, he believed in international cooperation as well as a strong defense policy.
Rabbi Wolsey (1877 – 1953) earned a degree from the University of Cincinnati and, after completing his training for the rabbinate at Hebrew Union College, he was ordained by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, earning both degrees in 1899. After ordination, he served in various pulpits, first at Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock; then at Congregation Ansche Chesed (Euclid Avenue Temple) in Cleveland; and finally at Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia. He was a founder of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (1926); served as chairman of the committee that revised the Union Hymnal (1936); and held many high positions with the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), including serving as its president.
However, when the CCAR passed a pro-Zionist resolution favoring the establishment of a Jewish army in Eretz Yisrael (1942), Wolsey, who was adamantly opposed to political Zionism and enraged by the resolution, undertook to establish a “non-Zionist” association, leading to the founding of the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), which established its headquarters in Philadelphia. However, with the birth of Israel in 1948, he formally withdrew as an ACJ member because, he believed, the AJC had elevated anti-Zionism over Reform principles, which Wolsey considered paramount. In the face of “a harried European Jewry,” he argued that “the Zionist movement . . . should dissolve into a unity of world Jewry for the creation of a Jewish culture and a Jewish life in Israel.”
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V-Mail Passover Greetings from North Africa (1944).
One very interesting sub-category of communications sent by Jewish servicemen stationed in Europe during World War II took the form of “V-Mail Service” letters and cards that were artistically customized to carry Rosh Hashanah greetings. Exhibited here is a Passover greeting sent by a Jewish serviceman stationed in North Africa during World War II, which correspondence often took the form of “V-Mail Service” letters that were artistically customized to carry holiday greetings. The exhibit is a beautiful 1944 hand-drawn V-Mail letter that illustrates a Jewish American soldier in uniform proudly striding forward while, in the background, the Jewish people are depicted standing safely on the shore while the Egyptians drown before them in the Red Sea under a Hebrew phrase above that reads “The Time of our Freedom.” The lovely fusion of themes is both obvious and touching; just as the Jews in Egypt overcame the enemy with G-d’s help in Biblical times, so the Americans and allied forces will ultimately succeed in defeating the Nazis in North Africa. The cited verse from Exodus XIII drives this idea home: “The L-rd led them . . .”
V-mail, short for “Victory Mail,” was a hybrid mail process developed by Eastman Kodak and used by America during the Second World War as the primary and secure method to correspond with soldiers stationed abroad. To reduce the cost of transferring an original letter through the military postal system, a V-mail letter would be reviewed by censors, photographed, and transported as thumbnail-sized image in negative microfilm and, upon arrival at their destination, the negatives would be blown up to 60% of their original size and printed. According to the National Postal Museum, “V-mail ensured that thousands of tons of shipping space could be reserved for war materials. The 37 mail bags required to carry 150,000 one-page letters could be replaced by a single mail sack. The weight of that same amount of mail was reduced dramatically from 2,575 pounds to a mere 45.” This saved considerable weight and bulk in a time in which both were hard to manage in a combat zone.
Another important benefit of the V-Mail system was that it prevented espionage communications by foiling the use of invisible ink, microdots, and microprinting, none of which would be reproduced in a photocopy.
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Exhibited here is a rare original correspondence telegram sent from Jerusalem in the midst of World War II from two Jewish children to their parents in Shanghai. The family, separated because of the War, seeks to communicate through telegrams, which are censored by the authorities in both Eretz Yisrael and Shanghai.
Passover greetings to Shanghai (May 1944).
The children, Trude and Jacquy [Jacob] Rathsprecher, touchingly write:
Received this week two answers, end September, beginning November. Best Holiday wishes. Celebrated beautiful Seder. Are confident in future to see you soon.
Love, Trude, Jacquy
Shanghai was an important safe-haven for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust because it was one of the few places in the world where a visa was not required. Some 23,000 European Jews found shelter there because Shanghai was then an open city with no immigration restrictions, and several Chinese diplomats issued protective passports and transit visas to Jews and others fleeing the Holocaust. Later during the War, the occupying Japanese forces relocated the Jewish “stateless refugees” to an area less than a square mile in Shanghai’s Hongkew district, which included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue. Japanese authorities progressively adopted additional restrictions, but the ghetto was not walled, the local Chinese residents did not leave, and American Jewish charities were able to assist by providing necessities to the Jews of the Shanghai Ghetto.
Late in the War, the Nazis pressured the Japanese army to develop a plan to exterminate Shanghai’s Jewish population. However, this attempt to bring the Holocaust to China became known to the Jewish community’s leadership and, with the intercession of the Amshenower Rebbe, the Japanese – who, in any case, had little motive to further antagonize America and the Allies after they had already invaded China – delayed the German request until the War ended and thereby kept the Jews of Shanghai safe.
After the War, many of the Jews of Shanghai emigrated to Eretz Yisrael and helped to establish Israel, but this Red Cross postal message stands as a historical testament to the important and generally unrecognized role that China played in saving Jews during the Shoah.
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In this Passover 1944 Passover Message at the height of massacres and killings of Jews during the Shoah, British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz issues an emotional appeal to remember the dead during the Seder night itself and to pray for deliverance for the living after Elijah’s Cup:
Chief Rabbi Hertz asks Jews celebrating Passover to remember the Jews of Europe (1944).
On Monday next, Passover joy will enter every Jewish home. In recent years, the rejoicings have been increasingly overcast by the agony of Israel in Nazi lands. This year, the Jews of Europe have been reduced to a worse than Egyptian slavery; and we are filled with dismay at the little that has been attempted so far towards rescuing them from torture and butchery. It is our sacred duty to remember them on our Festival of Freedom, as well as solemnly to call to mind the million and more of our flesh and blood who have been done to death with appalling cruelty at the behest of the fiendish tyrant . . .
May the coming Passover bring release from terror and oppression to our harried brethren, and a victorious peace to the Forces of Freedom.
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Exhibited here is the Passover 1944 issue of Young Jewry, a children’s magazine issued by the Joint Emergency Committee for Jewish Religious Education in Great Britain, which reflects the Orthodox Jewish experience in Great Britain during the Holocaust years. Targeted to Jewish children evacuated from urban centers in the United Kingdom during World War II, its articles and drawings include: include “Seder Night”; “The Story of Passover Re-told”; “Historic Days”; “From the Aggadah” [in both English and Hebrew]; “a Pesach Bombshell”; “World Jewry – United States of America”; “A Letter from Eretz Yisrael”; “Albert Einstein, A Great Scholar and a Loyal Jew”; the musical score (with words) for Ivrim Anachnu (“We are Jews”); “Home for Pesach”; and “The World We Live In – The Tunnelers of Siloam.”
In the News Letter, part of which is exhibited here, the correspondent writes that, according to the War Refugee Board established by FDR, there are only a few months left to rescue European Jews; he goes on to make a particular appeal to save the Samaritan Jewish community in Nablus, “the Shechem of Bible times”; and supports the proposal by Churchill and General Montgomery to found a colony for servicemen in Eretz Yisrael as a memorial to Brigadier General Frederick Kisch, the chief military engineer of the Eight army.
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On March 28, 1945, just over a month before the official German surrender, the American 42nd Infantry Division held a Passover Seder attended by some 1,500 soldiers and civilians, believed to be the first public Jewish observance in Germany since the Nazis came to power in 1933. Held on the first night of Passover in Dahn, a small German city west of the Rhine River on March 28, 1945, the Seder was a powerful triumphal statement for Jewish American soldiers, demonstrating the importance of winning the war for the Jewish people after years of persecution.
The 42nd Infantry Division, through the efforts of Chaplain Eli Bohnen and his assistant, Eli Heimberg, created a “Rainbow Haggadah,” a makeshift Haggadah printed using the same press that printed their division newspaper and is believed to be the first Jewish ritual printing in Germany since 1933. U.S. Army cooks prepared the food, which included fresh food (a welcome change for the soldiers), and German civilians served and cleaned up. In a news release about the Seder, Maj. General Harry Collins, the division commander, wrote
To my Jewish Soldiers: the celebration of Passover should have unusual significance for you at this time, for like your ancestors of old, you, too, are now engaged in a battle for freedom against a modern Pharaoh. This Pharaoh has sought not only to enslave your people, but to make slaves of the whole world. G-d grant that victory for us will make it possible for you to celebrate the next Passover with your loved ones at home, in a world you helped make free.
Collins was a passionate critic of antisemitism, as to which he advised his troops: “I know that there exists, in some divisions, what your people call antisemitism. It will not be tolerated in my division. Should it crop up, I will hold you personally responsible if I am not made aware of it immediately. If it does occur, I will hit the S.O.B.s so hard they will not know what struck them.” He authorized Bohnen and Heimberg to make several trips back to Luneville, France to purchase supplies to prepare the Passover meal, including chickens, eggs and vegetables, and matzah was shipped to the division courtesy of the Jewish Welfare Board in New York.
Since World War I, the 42nd Infantry has been known as the “Rainbow” Division because, according to its first division chief of staff, then-Colonel Douglas Macarthur, it was formed “like a rainbow,” as a combination of National Guard units from 26 states. On March 21, 1945, soldiers of the 42nd captured Dahn, their first German city, and, though the Jewish Welfare Board provided Haggadot for troops overseas, the Haggadot never made it to Dahn because of the short time frame between the capture of the city and Passover. Accordingly, Bohnen and Heimberg decided to compose a makeshift Haggadah, which was printed on the same press used by the American soldiers to print their newspaper. As Bohnen delightfully noted in a 1945 correspondence sent to his family in America, the soldiers printing the Rainbow Haggadah used Nazi flags – which “for once served a useful service” – to clean the presses.
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Agudas Israel Jewish Forces Passover Booklet (1945).
Exhibited here is a spring 1945 booklet issued by the Agudas Israel organization of Great Britain (Forces Welfare Committee) in celebration of Passover. Features include A Message to Servicemen by Jacob Rosenheim, President of the Agudas Israel World Organization; A Talk to Jewish Servicemen by Lt.-Col. I Brodie, Senior Jewish Chaplain of His Majesty’s Forces; an account by a Jewish serviceman on the Eighth Army’s liberation of Holland; pieces on Passover in the Chassidic World; and a collection of news flashes, including the establishment of a Jewish chaplaincy in Lublin for the religious needs of Jewish soldiers and the dispatch of 500 sets of tefillin and 2,000 mezuzot to liberated Europe.
Wishing all a continued chag kasher v’sameach, and L’Shana Habaah B’Yerushalyim!
