Daniella Greenbaum Davis@DGreenbaum
Passover is a national liberation holiday for the Jews. In my family, it’s also a personal one.
Every year at the Seder, my erudite, academic (long winded!) Zeida would pass the reins to my grandmother, Masha, when we got to the part in the Haggadah - “avadim hayinu” - we were slaves in Egypt.
And every year, she would tell us of her own personal journey from slavery to freedom. Masha, born in Lithuania, had her education interrupted first by Soviet occupation and oppression, and then by the Nazis.
Over 95 percent of Lithuania’s Jews would be murdered during the Holocaust, including Masha’s father, Sholem. But Masha survived with her mother (for whom I am named), and her sister, who is still alive, and celebrating Passover this year in Mexico City.
Masha’s time as a slave would span several countries. It included: forced labor in a Nazi ammunition factory (where she quietly sabotaged munitions, risking her own life), death marches, cattle trains, and finally, her last stop: the notorious Nazi concentration camp of Bergen Belsen.
Of her liberators, the British army, she would tell me that when the first tank came in, a soldier got out, looked at the skeletal women in front of him, looked at the piles of bodies on the ground - some still moving, and began to weep. “He had come from the fight, he had come from the struggle. But he had never see anything like Bergen Belsen.”
A week or two before liberation, which was on April 15, 1945, was Passover. The Jews of Belsen sat in their barracks and tried to sing whatever they could recall from memory of the Seder. There were many bitter ironies - “let all who are hungry come and eat” - but they were so hungry. One of the rabbis at Belsen made a special blessing: on Passover we are forbidden from eating bread. But there was no matzah. And some days, a slice of bread was all the Jews had to eat.
He made a new blessing that apologized to god for eating bread on Passover, but also reasoned with god: you commanded us to LIVE by your mitzvot. To live, not to die. In order to do so, we must eat this bread.
The most bitter irony at the Seder came during the singing of “avadim Hayinu” - we were slaves, but now we are free.
It was too much for most. But my grandmother and her mother and sister stayed seated and sang and prayed that one day, like the Jews of Egypt, they do would be liberated. That the words “from slavery to freedom” would be something they could celebrate once again.
A short time later, Belsen was liberated. My grandmother went on to complete high school, college, and earn a masters in Jewish history; authored two books, hundreds of articles, and lectured before tens of thousands of people.
She died on October 7, 2024. I was privileged to be next to her. She was a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great great grandmother. Tell your children this story.
