In 1989, when a journalist interviewed Mrs. Faye Porter-Arenzon – the mother of Rabbi Shlomo Porter, director of Etz Chaim Center for Jewish Studies – she told him about the many miracles that saved her life during the war. He asked her, “What about all the other people whom G-d did not save? Why didn’t He do miracles for them?” She answered, “That’s a good question. I don’t know.” He asked, “So, how can you still believe?” She answered, “I don’t know. I believe in G-d, and that’s all. I believe.” Although she did not have the answers, she could live with the questions.
Faye Porter-Arenzon left this world on December 1, 1909, at the age of 100. To most observers, her advanced age and the fact that she survived the Holocaust at all can clearly be attributed to miracles. But it could be said that the biggest miracle was her own recognition of the miracles, her unusual ability to live with complete faith in G-d, even though she had ample reason to lose that faith. Could that be the definition of emunah peshuta, the simple faith that eludes so many of us today?
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Mrs. Porter-Arenzon was born Faygeh Merin, around March 15, 1909, in a small town called Horodok, which is today part of Belarus. It was a very small town, with only about 100 Jewish families. With the outbreak of World War I, the whole town moved hundreds of miles away. Faye’s father was a melamed, who would teach in the house. Faye listened to what he was teaching the boys and knew all the parshios of the Chumash very well because of her memories of that time. She married the boy next door, Srulik Putchtik in 1937 and moved in with her in-laws in Maniewicz. They soon had two daughters.
Srulik’s brothers had left for South America and the United States, but he stayed in Europe to support his sisters and earn money for their dowries. (Some of the sisters did get married, but they all died during World War II.) In 1941, the Nazis came and tried to kill all the men – at that time they weren’t killing the women and children – so Srulik ran away. Because of his connections with non-Jews, he was able to hide in the cemetery of Horodok for six weeks. During that time, he sent flour home to his wife and children. A woman whose husband had been killed came to Faye’s house and saw that she was making dough for bread. The woman said that she had no food, so Faye gave her half of the dough. Faye would later say that she thought she survived the war in the merit of this act of chesed.
When Srulik returned, he and Faye lived for a year under German rule. When people realized that the Nazis were coming back, this time to kill everyone, Srulik wanted the family to run away to the forest, but Faye was afraid to go with the two little children. He ran away by himself, and with the help of a Polish forest guard named Slovac, was saved. “Every Jew who escaped from the dead,” Faye said, “Slovac took them to his forest and took care of them.” When Srulik got to the forest, Slovac gave him a rifle, 150 bullets, and two grenades.
That a Jew from a small shtetl knew how to use firearms was a miracle in itself. Srulik had learned how to handle a gun and shoot because he had been drafted into the Polish army 20 years before. At that time it seemed like a tragedy, but in the end it saved his life. Srulik told Faye that if she should escape, she should come to the forest and Slovac would know where he was hiding.
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On Sept. 23, 1942 (Elul 23), the Nazis began rounding up the Jews of the town into a ghetto. Faye was staying with her children at her parents’ home. That evening, she went across the street to her cousins’ house to figure out how to escape. When she got there, it seemed no one was there, so she went back into the street. A Ukrainian soldier put a gun to her head and was about to kill her. She said, “Why waste a bullet? Anyway you are going to kill all of us tomorrow.” Miraculously he let her go.
She tried to return to her family, but by then there were too many guards. She saw that even if she could reach them, they would not be able to escape. She ran into a barn and hid in the straw. The next day, the Nazis went from house to house rounding up all the Jews and taking them to the edge of town. Faye heard the shots as they killed them – 380 people in all, including 75 members of her family and her husband’s family – and buried them in a mass grave. The Nazis searched the barn and even bayoneted the pile of hay where she was hiding, but they did not find her. Another miracle.
That night, Faye ran away to the forest with her cousins, who had hidden in the ceiling of their house. They survived by eating berries. She did not know if her husband was alive. She went to Slovac’s house, but only his wife was home, and she had not seen Srulik. After six months, Srulik found Faye in the forest. She was down to 80 pounds, and he carried her back to live with the partisans. A miracle.
The partisan group included about 150 fighters and more than 250 civilians in a family camp. The majority of them were Russian Jews, but the Russian army controlled the group. Srulik became commander; he blew up train tracks and eight Nazi trains and attacked Germans command posts, killing many Nazis.
Faye and Srulik were one of the few couples among the partisans. Faye became the nurse and cook for the partisans. She was always kind and giving, even at the risk of her own life. One night someone came to her in terrible pain from stomach cramps. It was strictly forbidden to light any kind of fire at night; despite the danger, she warmed up milk for him. That man later lived in Milwaukee near the Porter family. His son was the one who convinced Rabbi Porter to go to yeshiva as a teenager. A physical kindness was returned with a spiritual kindness.
In 1943 the partisans dictated that only fighters were allowed in the camp, no women and children. Srulik decided to separate from them, and took responsibility for the entire civilian group. It fell upon him to find food and protect them. Every night he and his helpers went out to look for food. They dug potatoes out of the peasants’ fields and stole chickens from their hen houses, killing them on the spot by twisting their necks. Once, the people waiting for him in the forest thought he had gotten killed. Men were already lining up to marry Faye, but she said, “Let’s wait and see if he comes back.” Two weeks later he returned.
By October 1944, the war was over on the Eastern front. Faye was pregnant, and her son, Jack Nusun, was one of the first Jewish boys born after the war, on December 2, 1944. Srulik and Faye decided to do the bris on the eighth day. There was no mohel to be found, and they agreed to have the son of a mohel do the bris, even though his only experience was watching his father.
At the bris, Srulik saw a Jewish Russian soldier, who had just returned from the war front. He asked the soldier if he would be interested in meeting his cousin, a woman who had survived the war with them in the partisan camp. The soldier answered, “Why not.” Then he asked the cousin, an older single, if she would like to meet the Russian soldier. She also agreed. Suddenly, Srulik banged on the table, to get everyone’s attention, yelling, “Mazal tov.” Everyone was astounded. What was the mazal tov? “We have here a chasan and kalla,” he announced. Srulik told the mohel to set up a chupa right away, and the mohel married them. Their marriage lasted for 40 years. Of course, the newlyweds moved in with Faye and her husband, together with the other 20 people who lived in the one-room apartment.
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Faye and Srulik wanted to move to Israel, but they decided to go to America first, hoping to go to Israel from there. They put a photo of themselves in The Forward, and a brother of Srulik recognized him and sent them an affidavit and a ticket to America. In America, Faye had to learn a new language and adjust to a new world. First they lived in Chicago. They later moved to Milwaukee, where their son Shlomo was born. Srulik worked as a scrap metal dealer. At age 44 – despite the doctors’ warnings not to have another baby – Faye gave birth to a daughter, Bella Yenta, named after both their mothers.
Faye and Srulik’s home was shomer Shabbos, even when most jobs required one to work on Shabbos. Says their son, Rabbi Porter, “Our Shabbos table was full of Torah, zemiros, songs, and stories, which filled our hearts with joy, happiness, and meaning.” Faye and Srulik’s tradition of kindness, optimism, and faith continued as they raised a family in America. Rabbi Porter remembers coming home from public school and telling his mother that the lunch served that day smelled really good and he wanted to eat it. His mother went to school to see what it was that smelled so good, and reinvented the dish at home so that her son would be happy with a kosher lunch.
The Porter home became the hachnasas orchim of Milwaukee. They took in anyone who needed a place to stay: meshulachim, rabbis, people who came for medical treatment, and hobos. Faye fed them all.
After her husband Srulik died, in 1979, Faye took in girls who were becoming religious and became like a mother to them, including doing her best to find them a shidduch. At age 75, Faye married a wonderful man, Yehudah Arenzon, and they had a great marriage for nine years until he, too, passed away. She met him at the senior center, after asking this nice man sitting next to her if he knew of someone who wanted to get married. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”
Yehudah had been a Gerrer chasid in Warsaw and learned in yeshiva until he was 15. He left it all and went to South America before the war. In the last years of his life, through Faye’s influence, he became a complete baal teshuva.
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At her levaya, Rabbi Porter said, “Mama, you were so real and uncomplicated, and only now can I begin to comprehend your greatness..Everyone I know has self interests, except you, Mama. You never asked for anything for yourself. If my wife, Shushy, would compliment you on a beautiful object in the house, she would say, `You like it? You can have it. Ich vil geben alas mit varama handt – I want to give everything away while my hands are still warm.’
“You had every right to be negative, after losing your children, but you chose to see only the good. You had every right to forsake Hashem and Yiddishkeit.but you chose yiras shamayim, ahavas torah. Mama, you showed so much honor to every rabbi. You had the right to become withdrawn after losing Tata 30 years ago and then Yehudah Arenzon 16 years ago, but you chose to love and to give to others. You could have given up on life, but you chose life. You chose to care about others.”
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For the last 15 years of her life, Faye lived in Minneapolis in an assisted living facility near her daughter. Although she had dementia towards the end of her life, it was a “good kind of dementia,” according to Rabbi Porter, “in the sense that she remained positive. Because she did not remember things, every moment of her life was new and fresh.”
Her emuna was very strong and never faltered. As Bella said at the funeral, “My mother was a very wise woman. A month ago she was quite weak, so I decided to spend the night with her, to make sure she was okay. My mother asked me to lie down next to her. We both fell asleep for a short time; in the middle of the night my mother woke up, fully alert, and turned to me and asked, `Why do we suffer so? Why do the goyim hate us?’ I said, `Mama I don’t know. What do you think is the reason?’ She said, `I think it’s because we don’t do enough mitzvos.’ My mother, with dementia, was so, so wise.”
Rabbi Porter talked about the last few months of his mother’s life: “About a month ago my mother stopped eating and was losing weight. My sister and I talked about putting in a feeding tube. When the gastroenterologist heard that a 100-year-old woman wanted to schedule a feeding tube, he came by to meet her with the intention of talking her out of doing it. When he met my mother, she said to him. `You should come in my age and be healthy – G-d should bless you, because you are helping this old lady. Do you know how old I am?’ He said yes. She said, `You should come in my age and be healthy.’ Then he asked her, “Why not until 120?’ As it turned out, he was a Russian Jewish doctor, and he proceeded to encourage my mother to do the procedure. She told him, `Lucky will be the girl who you will marry, because you are so kind.’
“Before the procedure my mother was with a gentle nurse, from India. My mother was saying, `Aron, Sender, Zisa, Elka, Rivka.’ The nurse asked me if she was naming her children. I said, `No, she is naming her brothers and sisters who were killed in the Holocaust.’ The nurse said in awe, `She is the first survivor I ever met.’ My mother worked to be able to not forget them – even as she was forgetting so much.”
Most of us in Baltimore did not have the privilege of knowing Faye Porter- Arenzon, but hearing about her life is truly inspiring.
