On December 8, 1941, my Dad, who was at that time too old to
be drafted, quit his job and volunteered to join the fight against tyranny. Two-and-a-half
years later, on
After the war, my Dad returned home,
tossed his medals into a cigar box, hung up his uniform, got a job, and got
married. He rarely spoke about the war until a couple of years before his death
in 2006.
In 2005, I was invited to speak to
the graduating class of the Tachkemoni Day School in Antwerp. The school prides
itself on the fact that its graduates speak French, Hebrew, English, and
Flemish. Before my speech I was invited to tour the school. When I entered the
library, a set of five books the size of a Vilna Shas caught my eye. The hollow-back
spines of the books made me do a double-take. Printed on each volume were
decades, beginning 1900-1909 and finishing with a half a decade for 1940-1945.
Each book had the school logo, and underneath the logo there was a swastika!
Although Tachkemoni only became an
incorporated school in 1920, it had begun as a cheder in 1898. The huge books were guest books. They contained the
names and addresses of special honored guests who came to visit the school from
all over Europe. In the first edition, I noticed an entry in 1901 from Theodor
Herzl. The librarian explained that when the Nazis marched into Antwerp in 1940,
they seized these valuable books in order to easily locate the prominent Jews
from the addresses listed. The thinnest edition (1940) had only been produced
six months before the Germans entered
The librarian said, “This may
interest you,” pointing to the 1940-45 mostly-empty guest book. She opened it
to a section entitled “Sukkos 1944.” Entered on two pages were the names of
Jewish U.S. soldiers who, upon entering Antwerp, requested permission to
explore several Jewish institutions in order to try to salvage surviving items
from further desecration. Twenty-nine soldiers were given permission to take five
hours from their own rest time to visit the desecrated institutions. It seems
that when the soldiers entered Tachkemoni to search for salvageable items, they
came across the “Honored Guest” books. Since these were not holy books, the
soldiers left them behind but, decided (for whatever reason) that, before
leaving, they would sign their names and fill in the required blanks. As I
glanced at the signatures, one soldier’s name stunned me! Sergeant Joseph
Lerner, 3rd Armored
Infantry (Baltimore, MD). Seventeenth on the list was my Dad’s name and
signature. There I was, 60 years later, standing where my Dad had once stood
holding a book which he had once held!
As my mentor and friend Rabbi
Emanuel Feldman succinctly writes in Tales
Out of Shul, “We never know how the story is going to end.”
I
decided to share this personal tale at a time when we all realize that no one
knows how the story will end. My Dad, a”h,
never imagined that, in the ruins of war-torn 1944 Antwerp, in a building
which had been once a Jewish school, there would ever again be the sounds of davening and learning. Today, hundreds
of Jewish kids are enrolled, and many choose to live in Eretz Yisrael after
graduation. In 1944, in the midst of World War II, the idea that there would be
a sovereign Jewish state was unimaginable!
I pray that we, like my Dad, a”h, will all experience G-d’s
continuous miracles of renewal and Jewish survival. The story is still being
written. May we be blessed to see the redemption soon!
Rabbi Dr. Ivan Lerner, a former day school principal, is Rabbi Emeritus of the Claremont Cape Town , South Africa
